Jump Drives and Multidimensional Rifts Don't Mix
by KotoroShinoto
Summary: A young Half Saiyajin flees Planet Vegeta upon its annexation into Emperor Cold's forces, hoping to return one day to help free his people from tyrannical rule and conscription. During his journey toward Earth, he tinkers with science and engineering that he doesn't quite understand, and his ship collides with a rift created by a pair of multidimensional entities focused on earth.
1. Ch 0 Field tests gone awry!

As a timer counted down, nearing the minute mark, a young man settled into his seat at the operations console of a small spacefaring vessel. On the screen and at the holographic station nearby, the blueprints and designs for a prototype jump drive using new principles of multidimensional space discovered while researching the strange techniques of the denizens of the planet Yardrat were visible.

Collaborating with the advanced cognitive AI that operated the research vessel his mother had left behind when she answered the summons to return to her Homeworld to give a scientific report, the young warrior had built on the tutelage he had received from his mother, an accomplished Centurion Academic with expertise in Xenobiology, Astrophysics, and Sociology, as well as being an accomplished engineer, Kotoro had managed to produce a model that had passed all the short range jump tests performed within-system without any notable aberrations in the scanner readings or falling out of spatial or chrono-synchronicity. There had been some odd readings in the mid to long range tests, jumping to the outer reaches of the star system, and to adjacent star systems, which had been corrected for in the operating parameters and had stopped appearing.

All of these initial tests of the prototype had been performed with small rocket powered drones also equipped with standard FTL drives to allow them to return if anything were to go wrong in a way that left them in a salvageable state in a proper dimensional frame and orientation to interact with. They were about to run through the same battery of tests with the drive having been engineered into the science vessel itself, and if successful they would attempt to jump to their real destination, a small planet in the backwaters boondocks of the territory controlled by the Cold Empire. Hopefully he could avoid the notice of Emperor Cold there, and come up with a plan to extract his people from the control and clutches of the evil empire.

Kotoro had managed to live a relatively normal life as a member of an elite squad of young Saiyajin trainees. The Ki restraints his mother and Epistēmē, the name of the AI operating the science vessel, had engineered had allowed Kotoro to perform at his actual peak whilst only appearing as powerful as a member of the Saiyajin Elite, albeit a fairly high-tier one.

As yet, he had been unable to master precision and reliability in controlling his physical might and the power of his ki, as he had grown in power and strength far too rapidly to adapt to the changes. Until recently this hadn't been a problem, but the appearance of Emperor Cold and the promise of mass produced Scouter Scope technology threatened to reveal the deception.

The Royal family already knew the truth, but the last thing Kotoro needed was to catch the attention of Emperor Cold. As powerful as he was becoming, he still wasn't as strong as his mother, or even a soldier in the Centurion army, and even they were not nearly powerful enough to take on Emperor Cold alone. However, if this rate of growth continued, it stood to reason that he would eventually become a force to be reckoned with, and with proper training, leaning heavily on the Saiyajin traits he inherited from his father, he may be able to accelerate his growth even more, and return to free the civilized universe from the control of this monster.

The countdown reached the 10 second mark, and began audibly counting down. Upon completion of the countdown, Epistēmē piloted the ship to exit the atmosphere, and performed the first test, a short range jump from the edge of the boundary between the ionosphere and the thermosphere to within several kilometers of the nearby moon. Experiencing this type of warp for the first time, Kotoro's senses were thrown for a loop. Even if they could be brought to understand the structure of multidimensional spacetime intellectually, mortal brains just weren't naturally equipped to handle multidimensional perception and looking out of the ship during the warp process had begun to give Kotoro a bad migraine. Epistēmē ran through the feedback of the multi-dimensional spatial sensors to ensure that no anomalies were detected, and everything appeared to be in order, so they moved on to the next test.

The second test would be a jump from the space around the moon to the edge of the star system beyond the smallest planetoids, to the edge of the farthest orbits any objects gravitationally bound to the local star would follow. A bout of nausea struck at the prospect of experiencing the odd perceptual experience again, and Kotoro closed his eyes for the duration of this test.

"All scanner readings are within tolerances, no anomalies detected, moving on to phase 3" Epistēmē said in a placid tone. This time, the process of warping would be more involved, as the ship needed to rotate further away from standard Cartesian space to align with a path through multidimensional space-time to allow what would appear to be instantaneous travel achieved by folding the ship through space in a manner similar to the concept of wormholes frequently appearing in Centurion fiction, since the destination is so much farther away. Under normal circumstances if everything works properly, the vessel wouldn't need to actually move at all. It should only need to engage impulse or standard FTL drives if something were to cause the vessel to fall out of its intended alignment or rotational path, in order to correct the positioning within multidimensional space.

As the ship rotated back into Cartesian space, the amount of light coming in through the viewports drastically increased and scanners indicated the vessel, named Techne, was now approximately 3 light minutes away from the closest star to the one Yardrat orbited. This particular star was a blue giant. The beauty of the sight and the success of the tests left Kotoro feeling a bit reinvigorated.

"Move on to phase 4 please, Epistēmē". This jump would be a much much farther distance, but it should take approximately the same amount of time to accomplish.

"5"

"4"

"3"

"2"

"1"

"Multidimensional Drive engaged"

So far so good.

"Multiple anomalies detected; Vessel has encountered severe spatial warp! Detecting dimensional tearing along the vector from original location to destination. Engaging impulse and FTL to correct path to destination"

Through the view-ports, Kotoro observed two enormous things stretching through and around and in the dimensional tear, seemingly burrowed into and across every dimension available to them. Whatever they were, they had caused a massive distortion and the vessel had inadvertently stumbled into it.

Not good, but hopefully Epistēmē can fix it.

"Returning to Cartesian space in 3...2...1" Epistēmē announced as the view shifted from painful mind bending awfulness to a view of a green, brown and blue planet with enormous oceans, a pair of polar ice caps, and generous cloudcover, and a fair amount of axial tilt. Around the planet was a single grayish moon with no atmosphere.

"This planet is consistent with all known and projected traits for our desired destination..." Epistēmē declared, trailing off a bit at the end. "That is promising. I'm sensing a 'but' coming though..." responded Kotoro. Epistēmē continued, "... however, the star-field as viewed from our current position does not match the projections based on previously mapped portions of the universe. Additionally, we cannot locate any signals from the galactic empire, or the criminal empire of King Cold, or even the star-system where Centurai and Rao should be. I'm going to pour over simulations of what may have happened, I'm turning over piloting controls to you Master Shinoto, I advise scouting out the situation on the nearby planet and finding a safe place to land. I've observed strong indications of intelligent life and a developed civilization. There are artificial satellites orbiting this world, detectable encoded transmissions in the EM spectrum, and portions of the planet not lit by starlight can be observed producing moderate amounts of artificial light."

Well...fuck, this sounded bad. Epistēmē and Kotoro and several Yardrat academics had discussed possible ways this tech could fail and what might result based on their models of multidimensional physics that the people of Yardrat had helped them cobble together from almost 9 months of intense experimentation and measurements using the various physics bending and teleportation abilities they were capable of. In addition to the multidimensional drive, Epistēmē and Kotoro had developed blueprints for a new line of ki restraint devices with a greater range and more precise configuration capabilities as well as a much higher failure point. They had also managed to build a prototype machine capable of creating and sustaining a pocket dimension. This had been installed into the ship in a few locations providing significantly more space for laboratories and fabricator equipment, as well as leisure and training areas, despite its relatively small size, having originally been designed as a very basic frontier research lab. It had been transformed into a much more capable proper science vessel. They had also developed many different techniques for avoiding detection. It wouldn't do to spend all this effort to escape Emperor Cold only to be detected in transit and have their plan foiled, had the jump drive technology failed, requiring a trip to earth using standard FTL drives.

"Might as well meet the locals until Epistēmē can figure out what happened." Kotoro thought to himself. His experiences with the various off-planet operations with his squad had shown that many civilizations were extremely hostile to contact from aliens, especially if it is the first contact they've had with life from another planet, so he decided that it would be prudent to activate every stealth measure available on the ship and to approach a coastal city from underwater at slow speeds in the dead of night to minimize his chances of being seen or detected.

After several hours of slow descent, during which the vessel's sensors had detected and analyzed a strange winged entity situated high in the atmosphere that appeared to be following them with its gaze, he reached the ocean's surface and submerged. At this point he set the vessel to locate a coastal settlement of medium size with a port and shallow bay area, and to have the non-sentient adaptive AI systems analyze the area upon arrival, with further instructions to awaken him when this task was completed and suggest locations where vessel might best burrow itself into the coastline to avoid detection while providing an accessible base camp. With these instructions entered, Kotoro retreated to the room which had served as the lab prior to the installation of the pocket dimension machines. It had been converted into a living quarters superior to the spartan bunk the ship had originally been equipped with. Taking a hot shower and changing into clothes suited for resting, he climbed onto the soft futon that served as his bed, and took a much needed nap after the previous several days of hard work and testing.


	2. Ch 1 Setting up base camp

A shrill military instrumental blared from a speaker in the ceiling of the living quarters, waking Kotoro. A pleasant synthesized female voice notified him that the requested analysis had been completed and compiled into a summary report and that they would arrive within 30 minutes. Kotoro quickly rose and exited the room, approaching the main console on the bridge to read and evaluate possible hiding spots for a base camp.

The long range scanners had detected a large underground cavity that had been created by weathering action of an aquifer, which provided plenty of room for a near term expansion opportunity for a covert facility. The AIs also made note of a large structure situated out in the bay, anchored into a smallish bit of land surrounded by water. There were only 3 locations suitable for a long term embedding of the ship which would also be out of sight and provide the capacity for expansion due to being rocky instead of mostly sand or silt or high dunes.

After perusing the report, the location near a fairly large number of sunken seafaring vessels appeared to be the superior choice. It appeared to be an abandoned seaport and had plenty of solid rock close to the surface. Of the other locations, one was near a wooden structure with what appeared to be a seaside bazaar of sorts with various activity facilities and stalls situated next to the edge of the sand, and the other was near a boatyard of sorts that had a dock that appeared to still be in active service.

First thing to do would be to embed the ship. Parking in the shallows, Kotoro exited the Techne and set foot onto the shoreline, approaching the rocky area to the edge of the dunes. Forming thin and intensely hot blades using ki, Kotoro set to work carving a sizeable chunk of the surface rock out from the underlying structure, large enough that it would hold together and shaped in a way that it would support itself and appear seamless when placed back down. Lifting this heavy bit of terrain and setting it on the beach, kotoro then began carving an enormous cavity into the exposed stone, hurling the pieces well out to sea in a vector that ought to avoid impacting a location where anybody would be looking. When a sufficient volume had been excavated, Kotoro tapped his communicator.

"Epistēmē, are you available to assist? If you pilot the Techne into the cavity I've exposed here, I'll get it all covered and buried and none will be the wiser come morning."

"Duly noted. Operations commencing!" replied Epistēmē, with the Techne suddenly and rapdily rising up moving over and settling into the cavity.

As soon as the ship completed fitting itself into the carved out parking spot, Kotoro levitated the carved portions of the original surface back into place, cutting a covert entryway into the material and heating the edges to cause the rock to melt and fuse back onto to the underlying stone. Giving the area a heavy sand blasting and dusting left it looking entirely undisturbed. Kotoro re-entered the now hidden cavity, and made his way back into the Techne, heading into a dimensional pocket where a small engineering fabricator facility had been installed.

"Epistēmē can we set the fabrication equipment to produce a spy drone? We need to collect some intelligence on the local civilization. I would like to ensure that my initial contact with the locals is as free of undue conflict as I can manage. I've had my fill of hostile invasions for several lifetimes!" Kotoro exclaimed. "I like a good fight as much as the next Saiyajin, but dealing with a panicking civilization was annoying if you have no intention of destroying them."

"While I was running simulations on the scans we collected during yesterday's mishap, I spared a few cores and set them on the task of trying to make sense of the local EM transmission protocols. I've made some progress in being able to obtain what I think are probably reconstructions of the original transmissions, but my efforts have stalled a bit. I can find no languages in my entire database that help with comprehending the content of these messages. I have been able to figure out some transmissions that appear to be numeric in nature, but without a contextual reference, figuring out more will take a proper linguistic reconstruction. Give me a week or two and I should have something basic to work with. If you or the drone could find some writing to use as reference material it would help me along." Epistēmē explained.

"I've got some results to report from the simulations on our current situation." noted Epistēmē.

"Lay it on me." Kotoro said.

"There may have been additional dimensions to the multidimensional fabric of reality that our initial models weren't accounting for. We may have traveleed along one of those vectors that we weren't aware existed. Alternatively, the Cartesian sub spaces that the various physical universes occupy may lie along one or more quantized dimensions that we had previously thought to be continuous. Any transport along these vectors that didn't place us beyond at least one quantized unit along these axes would snap back into the nearest quantized location along our path of travel. Our displacements in the initial field tests simply weren't of sufficient quantity to snap us back into a different locale."

"Could you explain that again, but with less technical jargon?" Kotoro asked. He was an excellent study at engineering and building things, but didn't have sufficient educational background to comprehend the trans-dimensional models that the AI was alluding to.

"Sorry. The majority of simulated alternative hypotheses that contain a model that results in a situation such as ours were a result of either temporal displacement or landing in an entirely different universe, or less commonly, both." Epistēmē explained.

"Would we be able to navigate back?" Kotoro asked.

"Ordinarily yes, if the only problem were a previously unknown set of vectors. However, those ...things that we saw appear to have severely torn and reshaped the fabric of multidimensional space around this planet across all multidimensional space-time. There are so many moving parts involved, that it makes conventional NP-Complete algorithms look simple. It is beyond our science at the moment. Perhaps there might be some information in what we recorded about the distortions as we passed through them that might enable a traceback, but I've no idea how long any such analytical algorithm would take to complete, or if the result would even be accurate. We're essentially flying blind here." the AI added.

"Shit. Retain that analysis as a high priority task in the long term, but shelve it for now, we have more immediate concerns. One upside of this is even if King Cold noticed our departure, there is absolutely no chance he'll be able to follow us here. I doubt he'd want to even if he could." Kotoro said, reeling from the scope of the problem before them. He had no idea how long it would take them to get back, or if it was even realistically achievable. In the effort to get away to provide a hope of salvation for his people, he may have entirely robbed them of his aid to escape their predicament.

The fabricator ceased whirring and a chime sounded, indicating the completion of the spy drone. It was small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, so he carried it to the outside of the ship and set it alight. It immediately cloaked and began hovering and headed into the city eager to begin observing the local populace under the direction of Epistēmē.

Kotoro headed back into the Techne, entering the dimensional pocket where he had set up his training equipment. He was having trouble coping with the current situation, and when the Saiyajin didn't know what to do, heavy training helped calm his mind and provide clarity. He dialed his Ki restraint devices up to their maximum suppresion and began an intense multiple hour training session, while the spy drone continued to observe the events occurring within the local settlement, waiting for sunrise to begin its assigned task to observe the local culture and intellectually advanced species perform their routine daily tasks.

Come morning, several of the machines were in ruins, and the Ki restraint devices were overheated and sparking. The walls of the room were glowing and/or scorched in several places, and Kotoro had fallen asleep while trying to meditate in center of the ruined space, deep tracks and gouges having been dug into the floor when he had pounded the floor in rage and frustration.

**[BEGIN Author Aside #1]**

My Choices Regarding Canonical Content

_[Worm]_

Worm's universe cluster may end up being a slight AU if I feel something needs adjustment, but all changes I enact will be variations using standard canon as the presumed default unless otherwise specified. As things progress it may turn into progressively more and more AU, not merely due to "butterflies everywhere" syndrome. Characters may end up with powers who didn't have them in canon and vice versa. Its been quite some time since I read Worm and I have not yet read Ward, but if I do something out of touch with canon, feel free to ask me if it was deliberate. I'd rather stick to canon, with respect to how the universe and characters work, except where I have deliberately chosen to change things.

The story begins ~2008, but there is going to be some rapid time progression between several key events leading up to Worm's original starting date. There will be more detail to this revealed in the actual story itself.

_[DragonBall ]_

As for my story's DragonBall universe, it is going to be irrevocably AU in several respects. I will use the motivations of the characters to map out what changes I think the butterflies will cause, but they're going to be significant. Kakarot will still be sent to Earth by Gine and Bardock, but there will be several key changes due to the presence of the OC and his family.

GT is non canon. With that in mind, Tuffles don't exist, at least not in the form and with associations to events mentioned in games/media related to GT. (i.e. planet Vegeta undoubtedly had some kind of civilization already living there when the saiyajins arrived, but we now have no basis for the saiyajin/Tuffle conflict/war, so it didn't happen.) DragonBall Super content is relevant, and anything retroactively introduced as having happened prior to the butterflies is canonical, but obviously the main events of DBS are so far down the line that all you can see are butterflies. There is no point in speculating this early as to what that would look like if the fic even survives that long. We're operating from a significantly pre-DragonBall starting point here.

For lack of in-canon explanation for how old King Vegeta III was at the time of his demise, I am deciding by author fiat that he was approximately 40, meaning he would have been born ~ Age 697, making him a bit older than Nappa. The OC was born circa Age 719. According to my attempts to research a timeline, King Cold annexed Planet Vegeta in Age 731, making my OC around 12 years old at the time the story begins.

There has been no word on precisely when the initial scouter scope technology seen in the DBS Broly movie was introduced. Via author fiat I will impose that the tech already existed when they were annexed and it was announced immediately, with the introduction / shipments to begin arriving after a month or two. (Given that the upgrade of scouter tech from the scope to the headset happened during events that took place in Age 732, it wouldn't make sense for the scopes to not have been in use for a while already, at least by King Cold's forces.) I will willingly update/change this to match canon in fresh content if it ever reveals more information that contradicts my original fiat decision.

I have introduced elements related to my OC's family building on an idea that has been bouncing around in my skull since high school (I graduated from H.S. in 2003 to put that in perspective). The OC is a "half-breed" (there are reasons for the quotes there speculate away), but the other half isn't earthling. I plan to go into more details via interludes as the story reveals more of these AU elements.

Co-Existence of both multiverse clusters and consequences of this

The entities did notice the earths in the various DB universes within their local multi-verse cluster, but they stayed well away from messing with universes where beings like the gods of destruction and Zeno were both present AND paying attention. Their interference with the multidimensional space around all earths is still there though, resulting in the events of the first chapter.

Laws of Nature, Physics, Biology, powers, KI, etc. don't work differently between the various earth-bearing universes that exist within their own Cartesian coordinate space. Earthlings from worm can in principle learn to use KI and bypass normal human limitations; its just that nobody in recorded history had ever done so to a degree whether they could do so demonstrably and repeatedly on command (perhaps with exceptions regarding those with entity-granted powers, but nobody would recognize it as anything different from run of the mill power-related bullshit).

There is nothing in principle preventing a trigger event from happening to anybody from any of the DragonBall universes who happens to end up on one of the Worm-cluster Earths. The idea that only humans who already have a Corona Pollentia as a youth can trigger is only half-correct. In principle the Corona Pollentia and Gemma could develop during the trigger at the same time, and result in an all-at-once brain development. The reason this doesn't generally happen is that the entities have ample time to use pre-cog to sift through humans likely to produce interesting data and preemptively assign shards to them. The humans of Worm simply don't know enough about how any of this works, and they were working from incomplete data.

The OC has absolutely no knowledge of any of the techniques or meta-information of DragonBall canon that he would not have been exposed to as a matter of course during his life on Planet Vegeta. He doesn't know the dragon balls exist. He would know of the artificial moon technique, and would have training in control of his oozaru form, and he would have heard of the legends of the super saiyajin as much as Vegeta had, but thats about it. He will also know various things relevant to his other parent's background, though as he has never been to her planet, this is all through conversation, reading, and instruction rather than direct experience.

By courtesy of hacking the Galactic Patrol databases, the OC will have had some knowledge of the culture and languages used on DragonBall Earth's, but due to typical Toriyama bullshit, most sapient races speak a common language, but there is absolutely no sense in thinking that a saiyajin would be able to speak any language present on Earth Bet right out of the gate. His laziness only extends so far.

Story Plans

As for my plans for the story, I don't want to spoil it for you unduly. I do have an over-arching idea of some key things which I want the story to touch on, but its a bit like navigation in that "traffic" may redirect or delay things. How the end result and journey turn out depends on how the story plays out, and I haven't planned all the minute details, as I prefer those to flow from the narrative as I write and edit. Its possible the butterflies may disrupt some of the early stations of Worm canon, but the butterflies in Worm's case will start slow before turning into an infestation rather rapidly later on. (certain events are absolutely going to change, because there is absolutely no way the OC won't be doing something about them).

There WILL be what are effectively flash-back interludes at varying intervals explaining who & what the OC is and how he came to exist and revealing some of the impact he and his family had on events prior to his departure. You will only be provided with as much knowledge as the characters involved possess until I deem it sensible to discuss or explain it in an author aside. After these interludes catch up to my first chapter, they'll begin to reveal the butterflies that are happening whilst the OC is involved in happenings in the Worm universe.

Closing

If you would like to do beta reading and editing I'm game. I've never done this kind of thing before, so it'll be a new process. We could use FF's built in feature for that if you're authorized, but otherwise if you mention it in a review and give me a way of getting in touch.

I plan to publish this to SpaceBattles when I'm several chapters in and feel there is sufficient content to merit doing so. I suspect some readers may not like this site as much as a forum-style site due to lesser author interactivity and lack of running commentary from other readers, while others prefer the cleaner story-only interface of FF, so I figure... why not both?. My username on SB and many other platforms is KotoroShinoto, Kotoro, or some other derivation thereof. Despite the shared name, the character is NOT intended to be a self insert.

**[END Author Aside #1]**


	3. Ch 2 Prepping for first contact

**{Author Note: Made an edit in previous chapter's author aside regarding OC's age as the OC's age had to be adjusted. I had originally planned for the character to arrive only a few months prior to Taylor's trigger event, but after I'd decided that he would have to learn the local language wholesale, I bumped the arrival back a few years, and in the process completely forgot about how that would impact the character's age.**

**Don't worry about this being related to shipping. There is one character that I thought might work in the abstract, or two if I am being honest about the apparent Saiyajin taste for fiery women, but Sophia is a bit too unstable for a relationship without doing some major therapy. She might destroy any hope for that happening all on her own even if it became an option.**

**The one I had in mind would actually work better if my OC was a bit older, but I wasn't really planning for shipping to be a big deal early in the story anyway. He's got time to age before that becomes an issue, and plans could always change there. The main problem with regard to age, is that if I have him age to 19 at around the time Taylor triggers, the various local authority figures would take him too seriously too easily, and he would be too old for the Wards to be an option. I want him to be underestimated.}**

Cauldron HQ, Earth Bet Date: March 6, 2008

Rebecca Costa-Brown, Director of the Parahuman Response Team, and also secretly the parahuman Hero known as Alexandria, stepped through a portal that had opened in a closet of her office. On the other side she found Doctor Mother, Number Man, Eidolon, and Legend already seated around one of the conference rooms within the multi-dimensional lattice that constituted Cauldron HQ.

"I received a high priority alert for an emergency meeting. Do any of you happen to know whats going on?" she asked the group assembled there.

"Contessa called for the meeting. She seemed quite bothered about something but hasn't divulged the reason as yet" answered Number Man. As soon as Number Man had finished speaking, another portal opened and Contessa stepped through looking somewhat haggard, a distinct departure from her normal appearance of being extremely well groomed and dressed to kill, both literally and figuratively.

"The paths have all changed" she spat out in a rush.

"Hasn't this happened before? I thought the paths change frequently." said Number Man.

"Not like this. Usually extra steps will be inserted to deal with emergent obstacles, or removed as the obstacles clear themselves from the path without intervention or the landscape of probabilities changes. Every step from beginning to end is completely different now. This has never happened before." Contessa said, expressing clear frustration and exhaustion in trying to deal with the current situation.

"Have you tried to create a path to figure out who is responsible for the shift and deal with it? Can you path a return of the situation as close to the status quo as prior to whatever caused the shifts? Also, can we do some kind of risk/reward analysis for this? Are the new paths largely better or worse than the old ones were in terms of number of steps and ethical costs? I know we haven't placed a high value on prioritizing ethics against the survival of all earths, but maybe this has a silver lining somewhere." Alexandria said, jumping into damage control mode.

"Moral costs are largely unaltered, but the involved parties and particular circumstances are still different. The number of steps and their difficulty can not be easily compared given the tasks are entirely different now. I'd call this an acceptable result ,but I don't LIKE it. The paths have never changed wholesale like this before. I don't know if this might happen again. My power has informed me that if I were to eliminate the individual responsible that it would come at the cost of a potentially powerful asset for other paths, making them significantly harder as a result. Stranding or killing him doesn't restore the status quo either, it makes things worse. Should we eliminate this individual, even through stranding on another earth rather than outright murder, the paths all suddenly stop several years later. I don't know what that means, but it doesn't seem like trying to eliminate this individual is a good idea." Contessa said wearily.

"Can you walk us through what you learned from attempting to path those solutions, even if they were sub-optimal? It might give us insight into what we're dealing with." Legend said.

"The possible paths to kill the individual either involve constructing scenarios incompatible with the survival of organic life using exotic effects, causing an encounter with a power that ignores normal physical rules, or placing the individual in the path of a strong master effect and ensuring his self termination. I am wholly incapable of doing the deed myself. If I try to specify the rules for a path requiring that I am the one to directly induce the fatal wounds, my power utterly fails to produce a path. This holds true for the rest of you as well, except for Eidolon, who, being a blind spot, I can't include in my paths. It probably depends on what selection of powers he can pull up when facing this person, but that still doesn't make it a good idea."

"I had thought they might be a cape with a strong brute power or some sort of thinker or trump ability that would allow them to avoid oncoming attacks, but further attempts at producing investigatory paths indicate this individual is not a cape. I don't know what is going on quite frankly. If he has no powers, I ought to be able to kill him myself, but I can't produce any such path." Contessa explained.

Alexandria's interests shifted at the mention of this individual potentially being able to trigger and become even stronger than they must already be. "Can we work this individual's presence into our plans? Can we make use of them to further our goals, maybe increase our chances of surviving, or lower the number of steps in the paths?" Alexandria asked.

In the throes of the panic attack induced by the sudden disruption of her paths, Contessa had been so focused on seeking an expedient method to return things to normal or eliminate the obstacle that this approach hadn't occurred to her at all. Querying her power, she received a promising response, and she replied "Yes, it appears that we can do that. It adds a few hundred steps to the near future, but eliminates several thousand steps from several future sub paths. It doesn't require specific action for several months, but we will have to prepare." she answered, her confidence in the future predicted and produced by path to victory beginning to solidify once again.

"Good, Keep us all posted on any future developments. Until something actionable comes up, we need to get back to our respective duties and day jobs." Alexandria said, rising from her seat. "Door me." she spoke in a flat tone. In response a portal opened near the wall behind her, and she stepped through, back into her office at PRT HQ.

Brockton Bay Shoreline, Boat Graveyard, March 15 2008

Kotoro had over the past week used the Techne's fabricator to generate several more spy-bots to produce a covert surveillance network to study the goings on and culture of the local populace. When he had set out on the expedition, the pocket dimension that served as the larder had been well stocked, but it hadn't been refilled completely while on Yardrat. He had spent most of his meals planet-side, eating what the friendly aliens had provided instead. Now, due to absurd Saiyajin appetite, he was beginning to run low on supplies. The spy drones had done several scans of texts that were stored in the local book repositories, apparently called libraries, and listened in on verbal communications throughout the city. Epistēmē had managed to produce a proper cognitive map of the dominant local language, and had insisted on communicating in said language as much as possible, forcing Kotoro into a crash course via full language immersion. Eventually, however, Kotoro would need to engage with the locals and become fluent through verbal and written communication with a number of different native speaking individuals. He had fitted himself with upgraded versions of his KI limiter equipment after waking to find his older ones had failed.

For the first several days they had been limited to what they could find in academic texts, but after they had built up a working knowledge of the local language, Epistēmē had been able to decipher the communication protocols for both wired and wireless data, and they had "plugged in" to the local network, which had opened up SO MANY avenues for the AI to pursue. He had spent the majority of the last several days copying and deploying subroutines into machines all over the planet, covertly digesting as much of the collective knowledge humans had made accessible via the internet, reporting back to Kotoro when he found something interesting or tactically relevant.

Of particular note, the local species, like most of the sapient species from their home universe, were 4 limbed creatures with 2 arms and 2 legs, and a head with a pair of eyes and hair. This was not unusual per se, but what WAS unusual was that like the Centurion people, they appeared to be almost biologically identical to the Saiyajin, with only very subtle differences. That had been astonishing in itself the first time it had happened, but to run into another species like this couldn't be a coincidence. According to Kotoro's mother, much like the Saiyajin, the Centurion people only had a handful of animals and plants living with them that shared fundamental biological traits and a genome with which meaningful comparisons could be made.

Some of the texts they had scanned from the local libraries indicated strong evidence that every species on this planet shared a common ancestry, and that there was an entire GROUP of species called the Simians, and a subgroup of those called Apes, from which the Humans were believed to have evolved. Saiyajins, and Centurions as of yet had no explanation for their origins or the origins of the organisms that seemed to share some degree of common biology with them. They had noticed similar patterns of common traits in OTHER species on their respective worlds, however.

The Saiyajin knew they were not native to planet Vegeta as they had fairly recently migrated from Sadala after decades of strife had destroyed the biosphere rendering the planet incapable of supporting life for the foreseeable future, so it hadn't bothered them very much, as they already knew they didn't share common descent with anything on their current world. Comparing against samples of organisms that had been brought over from planet Sadala, other than disease causing microbes, domesticated creatures, and common vermin and pests, had not produced anything that had common biology with them at all. More militaristic pursuits had dominated their culture, and since this line of research hadn't been productive, it had quickly been abandoned.

The Centurion people had developed rudimentary sequencing technologies for both their own and the normative local-genomic molecular structures, and were still actively investigating the local biota of their home-world with gusto, but had found that only very few species presented with any degree of biological overlap with themselves, also mostly being species that were involved with agriculture or living within and around their settlements much like the Saiyajin had noted.

As a result, research of this nature hadn't progressed within either culture nearly to the degree that it had advanced to on this Earth. This merited aggressive inquiry. Epistēmē had already begun prototyping improved sequencing technologies based on a fusion of technological advancements from all 3 cultures, using what they had been able to gather from Earthlings' scientific discoveries as a foundation. Most of the early earthling technologies involved the use of gels of varying densities to separate molecules of different size, but more recent advancement had capitalized on one of the techniques that had been used with gels to eliminate the use of radioactive isotopes, by replacing them with fluorescent molecules, and had forgone the use of gels entirely, opting instead to bind shredded pieces of the genome onto a plate and replicating them in place several times before doing a step by step round of the replication process using the light-emitting molecules, capturing the entire thing as a series of photographs, and decoding the sequence fragments from that. This was something that could be built upon and scaled up, using technologies from the other races, but this sort of engineering design was more Epistēmē's realm of expertise. Kotoro could assist with the practical elements of constructing and operating the prototype devices when the plans were completed.

Approximately 20 or so years ago, humans with special abilities had begun to appear, destabilizing society in general, resulting in some cultures and nations regressing into warring fiefdoms as the balance of power was upended, and in those nations that held together, resulting in a complete restructuring of society around these parahumans, largely divided into classification as heroes, rogues, and villains. Beyond this particularly interesting line of inquiry, Epistēmē had learned that this planet was being totally fucked over by entities known as endbringers. There were 3 of them, so far, although the gradual emergence of the second and third left open the possibility that more might eventually appear. They attacked population centers on a semi-regular basis, rotating which entity attacked each time, quite often resulting in total destruction of the target area, significant depopulation, or rendering the area uninhabitable or too dangerous to evacuate, due to extended exposure to the Simurgh, which was apparently that winged entity they had seen staring at them upon their arrival.

In the meantime, Kotoro was making preparations for his first foray into the outside world. He had the fabricator produce a set of Saiyajin armor, boots, and protective under-layers modified to appear visually similar to the clothing styles the local populace wears, with the added feature of a pocket, similar in concept to a belt loop, to hide his tail. He had also added a request for Epistēmē to tinker with the new scouter-scope and scouter-visor technology specs that they had stolen from the Cold Empire's databases before fleeing to Yardrat, to see if he could produce something that would blend in as normal eye-wear. This would not be ready for quite some time, as the Cold Empire's technology was built using unfamiliar circuitry and hardware designs that still needed to be reverse engineered and analyzed in depth before they could understand how it worked.

Donning an outfit resembling blue genes and a black t shirt, and footwear that resembled green sneakers, Kotoro exited the vessel and stalked his way out onto the beach. He began to jog at a brisk, but still seemingly normal, pace, at least for a baseline human, heading toward the Boardwalk.


	4. Ch 3 A morning jog along the boardwalk

Brockton Bay Shoreline, Northern end of the docks near the Boardwalk, March 15 2008; 7:30 AM

As he jogged, Kotoro thought about what he had learned from his surveillance efforts. Comprehension of what they observed had been improved by Epistēmē's ability to comprehend most of the dominant local language, but they had still been limited to what people chose to do and discuss. Epistēmē had learned a great deal more through his connections to the various broadcast transmissions for radio and television, and through his connection to the internet.

They were in a small city called Brockton Bay within a territory known as New Hampshire, north of another city called Seabrook and south east of a place called Dover.

[AUTHOR NOTE: I have changed my decision to be more in keeping with canon. The landmass in our world between Hampton and Portsmouth is completely different in Earth Bet, allowing for the large curved bay of Brockton, and as Brockton was the foremost early prospering city in the locale, neither Hampton nor Portsmouth exist in earth Bet (or at least they aren't separate independent cities, the same areas would be suburbs of Brockton or effectively part of it, depending on the progression of urbanization).]

There were groups of people who engaged in crime under a common banner called gangs. The ship had been hidden in the territory of a group called the Archer Bridge Merchants. Two other groups, the Azn Bad Boyz, and Empire 88, groups which were both quite obsessed with skin color, facial features, and cultural background, and tended to be aggressive to people who didn't fit their membership criteria, also operated within large territories of the city. All 3 of these gangs had some number of super-powered individuals within their ranks, but their criminal activities fit into slightly different niches. There were numerous other smaller groups, with or without super powered individuals, but none of them made news headlines or featured prominently in conversations the bots had overheard. Epistēmē had recently also discovered a website dedicated to discussing the parahuman phenomenon called ParaHumansOnline or PHO. He had registered an account under the user name MechaniSophy and had begun looking into available public knowledge on the super powered humans.

While Kotoro was beginning to understand the grammatical structure of spoken English, his vocabulary was still poor, and he was still entirely illiterate. If he was to fit into society, this would need to change.

He would not be able to find legal employment due to his age, as the legal efforts these humans had made to ensure child welfare perversely guaranteed that he would be unable to provide for himself without committing crimes, and so he required a guardian of legal age.

If he were a bit older he could apply for emancipation. Right now, it would be exceedingly unlikely they would grant it to him, provided he could even prove his actual age. He was 12 in terms of earth years, but his Saiyajin side's tendency for delayed growth caused him to appear more like he was 9 or 10 in terms of stature. He also had absolutely no legal existence within their system. That too, would have to change, and his options appeared to be somewhat limited.

As far as Kotoro knew, he didn't qualify as a parahuman in terms of physiology. While they likely would consider him human without questioning it much, considering the oddly similar biology and genome and inexplicable mating compatibility, he lacked a Corona Pollentia. He could certainly function as a cape though, as his abilities were on par with, if not vastly superior to, most movers and brutes he had read about so far. It was unlikely that anybody would recognize this distinction in a combat scenario though, and the legal system would probably grandfather him as included under the intent of the relevant laws if not their literal wording, considering how powerful he was compared to a standard human.

He didn't want to be a villain. He'd had enough of villainous behavior he'd had to engage in while trying to fit in with the existing Saiyajin culture and their penchant for planetary piracy. While he relished the combat, as any Saiyajin would, he couldn't look past what was being done to the people on the worlds they had sacked.

In his own missions he had tagged along with members of the Saiyajin Elite and/or Medium ranks. He had done his best to try to set rules of engagement that would circumvent outright genocide. He liked fighting, but he didn't have the disposition for murdering without feeling the moral weight of it. In keeping with this, he had always attempted to convince the populace of whatever world they had invaded to have their greatest warriors challenge the Saiyajin forces in a tournament of sorts, and willingly evacuate if they lost. It placated the Saiyajin desire for victory in combat, and limited the loss of life on the worlds that had agreed to it, but it was still hardly defensible.

He was strong enough in principle to take out the Saiyajin leadership and put a stop to the whole thing, but he hadn't wanted to alienate himself so thoroughly from his own people. He had cause to regret not having taken action now though, as the Saiyajin exploits had attracted the attention of King Cold, whose plans for the Saiyajins as part of his Empire's illicit activities dwarfed what they had previously done by orders of magnitude. Kotoro was sure the pride of the Saiyajin would be all but gone by the time he returned to them, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Perhaps he could leverage it as a catalyst to push for cultural change. At any rate, it was far too early to think about that. He didn't even know how to return home even if he wanted to.

He'd read in Epistēmē's notes that there were rumors that Empire 88 ran an underground cage fighting ring. He could easily excel at that and make a few bucks, but if he let on that he might as well be a cape, they might not take it well, and might try to press-gang him into their membership. It wasn't that they had any real hope of success in that regard, given their current cape roster, but he really would rather not deal with that. The only member of their roster he had any concerns about was Victor. his ability to steal skills could potentially make him a threat. Not in the sense that Kotoro would lose or risk any real direct harm from Victor. He wouldn't be able to steal Kotoro's physical prowess, as that was biological and as such wasn't a skill, but he might end up learning to use KI, and cause Kotoro to unlearn and forget what little he had been able to learn about controlling and suppressing his power, which would boost Victor to levels of power which humans on this world hadn't seen before, and simultaneously turn Kotoro into a threat to both himself and everything around him. Without the ability to control his power, as pitiful as that control currently was, he might destroy himself or somebody / something else by accident.

Being a rogue or independent vigilante sounded appealing, but again his age and lack of experience with the history and culture was a problem. It would be unlikely that his application / registration as such would be accepted until he was considerably older. That left the Wards, as he was too young for the protectorate, or New Wave a group of publicly outed capes.

He pondered the concept of a secret identity. He could respect the intent behind New Wave, but given how things had played out, it had clearly been a mistake. They simply didn't have the power to back up the fact that their identities were known. Kotoro didn't have that problem, but it would still be nice to be able to go out without people knowing what he was capable of doing. Could he really maintain one?

There was the matter of his tail, which he probably couldn't keep secret forever. If it was seen, it was unique enough that people would recognize him immediately. Also, this planet's lunar cycles were nuts. There was a full moon on a monthly basis. He would have to keep track of this and ensure that he did NOT go outside at night when the moon was full. His mother had taken him off world when he was 6 to train him in the use of his oozaru form where his rampaging wouldn't risk serious environmental destruction. Even at the time, his oozaru form had only been slightly weaker than his mother, and he was considerably stronger now than he had been then. He was thankful for that experience though, as he no longer lost his mind to the influence of the form.

In the event that he accidentally allowed himself to transform, he'd probably be able to avoid destroying anything or killing anybody accidentally, save for whatever destruction occurred as a direct consequence of where he was when it happened due to the sheer size of the form. Knowledge of the existence of the transformation would likely cause problems for him if its reveal was not managed carefully. He preferred to not reveal it at all, but circumstances would probably occur in which it was eventually revealed, and it would be best if he planned ahead to mitigate the fallout. He could remove his tail, but that would be giving up a potential trump card. The boost in raw power and the intimidation factor provided by the form were not something to discard so easily.

Centering his thoughts again as he finally reached the edge of the boardwalk, and continued jogging along its length, he continued to think on what he knew. He had learned that young humans usually live with at least one parent and often some siblings in a unit called a family. This was usually only seen in Saiyajin who were members of a closely knit clan or the royal family. Kotoro's father was unusual in his strong bond with his son and his mate, and so Kotoro had experienced a semblance of family life until his mother had been forced to return to her homeworld to present a report on what she had learned thus far in her mission. Her plan to return had had to be suspended when King Cold showed up.

Saiyajin children typically did not receive a formal education unless they showed an interest in a craft and became apprentices. Even in such a scenario, the education was often limited to directly relevant topics and wasn't very broad in its scope. This typically was only done by the weakest of low class Saiyajins, as it gave them a way to be productive and useful members of Saiyajin society despite their near uselessness as warriors. The royal family was different here yet again, as the king and his family were expected to be educated on a broad number of topics in order to competently decide matters of state and governance and deal with outsiders without making the entire civilization appear foolish. The rest of the children spent most of their time training and sparring and sorting out a social hierarchy based on battle prowess.

Kotoro had eschewed caring about his status within this form of social order as the Saiyajin who had clearance already knew his power dwarfed even the King, and those who didn't have clearance didn't need to know. He was secure in the knowledge that if he had cared enough, he could have bested them all with raw might. That seemed pointless though, as it neglected finesse and form. Instead of flaunting raw power, he focused on honing his technique while limiting himself to equivalent battle power to maintain the challenge and not ruin the experience for his peers. Suffice to say that in a very real sense, he was already practiced at maintaining a secret identity of sorts, through hiding the truth of his situation from most of his friends and colleagues.

As he reached the far end of the boardwalk, Realizing that his thoughts had derailed from his main objective, he forced himself back to thinking about his plans for the immediate future. When he was a bit older it would be trivial to get a civilian job with a construction crew or even the dockworkers association, but right now they'd probably pat him on the head and send him on his way. He sighed. It seemed the only path open to him was to speak with the local PRT and Protectorate to find out what options he might have for obtaining an identity, and what to do about his lack of guardianship. He didn't know if he could truly trust them or how they would react to his presence, but he wasn't flush with options, and if he didn't act now, he would soon be forced to begin stealing food if not mechanical supplies and raw materials to keep Epistēmē supplied. According to his research, he could always resign if things didn't work out. He had also read snippets of rumors and information about an organization called the Guild, run by a cape named Narwhal.

Perhaps an affiliation with them would be possible for both Kotoro and Epistēmē. As an advanced cognitive AI, Epistēmē was as sentient and sapient as any Saiyajin, Centurion, or human, and he had no restrictions or shackles like the ones placed on the less advanced adaptive AI software packages. As competent as those could appear to be at times, and as analytically capable as they definitely were, they still weren't equipped with a truly cognitive structure. They were actually at their core a very advanced chat-bot front end to a host of analytics and data-science packages with a large assortment of pre-trained machine learning models, and as such had no subjective experience or capacity for internal review and self reflection. They were prone to following what seemed like rational logic to conclusions that self aware minds would deem inappropriate at best, and downright evil at worst. Due to this they could not be given authority or agency to act without approval and supervision. Epistēmē, on the other hand, was as much a person as anybody else, though his status as an advanced cognitive AI meant his mental abilities were limited only by what computing power he could access.

They would withhold the information regarding his status as truly sapient with a lack of shackles for now, until they could figure out who they could trust, and how the humans might react to it. There were still intense debates about AI from time to time even on Centurai. Certain factions wanted to throw every system hosting an advanced cognitive AI into the heart of Rao, their local star. They were deathly afraid of what the unshackled beings might do, but so far all they seemed to want to do was be useful members of society. Kotoro didn't see the point of being afraid of them, but perhaps he was being unfair to their concerns. Very few things of this nature were a genuine threat to him, and that probably influenced his perceptions.

Making his decision, Kotoro tapped the communicator embedded in his right wristband, which doubled as a component of his KI suppression suite. "Epistēmē, I'm going to talk to the Protectorate. I think they're the best path forward if I am to have any hope of integrating into this society. I'm probably going to need your assistance in translating though, as I am entirely illiterate in English, and I can barely speak a few words of it right now."

Epistēmē responded "Roger! I'll keep a listener app on the line to notify me in case I get distracted. These humans are fascinating creatures. PHO is a hoot and a half, and not just for the information value. I might have a problem. I think I'm an addict. AAANYWAYYY i'll be waiting for you to chime in when you need me!"

Kotoro noticed several people suddenly turn to stare at him for a moment after he had spoken to seemingly nobody in a language none of them understood. He'd have to work on that. Everything else in today's test run had gone swimmingly. Nobody had reacted to his presence in an untoward way at all. He fit into the crowds and didn't stand out, at least until he opened his mouth. 'Note to self, make a communicator extension that looks like a cell phone or something, so people don't think I'm nuts' Kotoro thought as he turned toward Downtown and continued his jog, aiming to blend into the crowd as much as he could.


	5. Ch 4 Healthy Skepticism

[Author's Note: When the characters are not speaking English within a context where English conversations are also happening, I will italicize it, to make it clear who can be understood by whom. If more than one language difference exists, I will be explicit and name the language.]

PRT ENE HQ, Reception Area, March 15 2008; 8:30 AM

Kotoro entered the lobby and approached the security desk.

"What might you want little fella?" Said the affable man at the desk.

After listening to Epistēmē's translation of the question via his hidden earpiece, and listening to Epistēmē's supplied response, Kotoro parroted the message, poorly, saying "I powers, cape, join wards, need testing, yes?".

Hearing this and making some semblance of sense of it, the man at the desk pushed a button to the side of his terminal and handed Kotoro a Domino mask, saying "someone will be out to see you. Its been a slow day, so it shouldn't be long, but I can't guarantee exactly how long it will be. There is a waiting room down the hall to the left, bathrooms further in around the corner."

Immediately, Kotoro put on the mask, and playing the translation and parrot game again, Kotoro responded with "Thank. Will wait." He then walked to the door of the lobby, tapped on his communicator and said "_hey, Epistēmē, pilot one of the smaller spy bots with speakers in here, I think this will work better if they know I've got a translator intermediary, though i'll have to introduce you. I'll meet it at the door. Please have it uncloak so they don't respond poorly to me having tried to sneak unknown tech into the building."_

Epistēmē responded "_I've got several in the area already, one should meet you at the door in about 4 minutes_". The man at the desk gave Kotoro a look when the small robot drifted through the door alongside an raised his eyebrow. "_is friendly; no hurt_", he said to the guard, who shrugged and looked back at his computer screen. Then he led the bot to the waiting room and sat down. Seeing a pile of magazines, he picked up one featuring what looked like tools and engineering parts, and had Epistēmē assist him in trying to learn some English words while he waited.

PRT ENE HQ, Reception Area Waiting Room, March 15 2008; 9:00 AM

An officer wearing a PRT-issue uniform stopped at the doorway to the waiting room and gestured to Kotoro "I believe you had told our security officer that you were interested in powers testing and joining up with the Wards program?".

Kotoro nodded.

"My name is Officer O'Grady. We've scheduled a meeting with the member of the Protectorate that acts as a supervisor to the Wards. I will lead you to the meeting room.", the man said, with a lilting accent to his English.

He pointed at the hovering drone. "What is that thing?" The officer asked.

"Can translate. Help understand. Help speak." Kotoro said.

"Is it tinkertech? We've rules about allowing unregistered tinker-tech into the facility." The officer asked.

This time Epistēmē answered for itself "No. If you would like I can submit the blueprints for the device, but it is entirely mundane technology, from our point of reference at least. There may be aspects to its design that are beyond your own current engineering abilities, but its maintenance and construction do not require powers. As to what _I_ am, I think we can discuss that further in the interview, but I am the closest thing this young man has to an adult guardian at the moment."

"I see. Please submit the blueprints at your earliest convenience. Send them here in some kind of standard format. The review teams here can figure out the rest." O'Grady said, flashing a hastily written down email at the drone's camera.

"If you'll follow me, I'll have to that conference room in a jiff." O'Grady added as he turned toward the open hallway and began walking. They ventured deeper into the building and rode an elevator to a higher floor, and eventually came to a small conference room where a man in armor, armed with a high-tech looking poleaxe was seated, seemingly staring into space, as text streamed into his visor.

O'Grady cleared his throat politely and the man suddenly noticed them, giving a slight start, standing and offering his hand "My apologies. I am Armsmaster. What do you call yourself?"

Kotoro accepted the handshake and spoke. "No secret name yet. Working on. not do hero things outside."

"We've a lot to discuss, which should help explain a great many things about our current situation." Epistēmē added.

"It was nice meeting you young man. I'll be on my way to resume my duties. When you're done with all of your activities for the day either I or the person taking over in the next shift will come back to escort you to the lobby. Good luck." O'Grady said as he exited the room and shut the door behind himself.

"I'm told you're interested in the Wards program. You seem quite young. Always tragic to see young capes, considering what people go through to obtain their powers. Do your parents know?" Armsmaster said stiffly, apparently following a script of some kind that he memorized.

Kotoro pointed at the drone and said "help translate. english bad" before proceeding to say in his native tongue _"Both of my parents are well aware of my abilities. I inherited a different portion of my various traits and abilities from each of them. I'll get to that later. The most important thing to explain, I think, is that to the best of our knowledge, we are not from this universe. Additionally, we are not from our own universe's Earth. We were attempting to reach that Earth with a new faster-than-light space travel prototype that had passed all of its field tests with flying colors, but something went wrong with the longer-distance between our origin and destination, and some kind of distortion around our earth caused a severe warping of our intended path, causing us to land in approximately the same location we were targeting, but in this universe instead of our own. Due to the complications of what may have led to the mishap, we do not currently know a safe way to map our path back, and using the technology again is too unsafe to attempt without a better understanding of what went wrong the first time."_

Armsmaster's face contorted through several different expressions of surprise and skepticism as he listened to Epistēmē parroting his English translation. _"_I hope you don't take this as a sign of disrespect, but you must understand, while we have had cases of humans from alternate universes, you'd be the first case of a bonafide alien that our civilization has ever come across, and yet you appear so... human. I'm open to being provided with supporting evidence, but at the moment its hard to accept. However, I have been reviewing the designs for the drone that you submitted, and I'm seeing aspects of its functionality that are not covered by anything registered in any patents, and several things which I would have thought couldn't be done without tinker powers, so I'm tentatively accepting your explanation, but with a large helping of skepticism. I'm going to be expecting further evidence._"_

_"_Completely understandable sir. We were actually discussing this the other day. The physical appearance and genetics of 2 populations of humanoids from our universe are not only mutually highly similar to the point of being reproductively compatible, which should NOT be possible given the science known to either race, but both are ALSO remarkably similar to humans from this planet. We presume that such would also be the case for the Earth from our universe, but as we've not visited, you're the first humans we've had occasion to analyze. It is a mystery to us as well, as no other species within our universe is anything like us. We've speculations as to how this came about, but no hard evidence to support any specific explanation save one thing. Neither of those populations shares apparent common ancestry with the majority of the organisms living on their home-worlds. Your own scientific literature indicates that humans have been building a strong case for universal common descent of organisms on this world. Whatever the explanation, humans or an offshoot thereof probably became the seed population for each of those populations. We haven't the slightest idea how this came about, however. I will share with the PRT and protectorate as much of our database about our known universe as we can once negotiations are concluded._" _Epistēmē explained.

Kotoro resumed speaking _"Despite my abilities, you will find that I do not have a brain structure corresponding to the ones found in parahumans. I assure you that I have abilities that resemble powers and will demonstrate them, but i'm not sure how that affects eligibility for the Wards program."_

"Most of the regulations and rules and laws put into effect were done with regard to the impact that people with abilities could have on society, and so it ought to be easy enough to integrate you into the system even if you don't scan as a parahuman. May I inquire as to why you were trying to reach your Earth? Is that a common thing in your universe?"

_"From the perspective of where I was raised, Earth was considered a backwater planet of low value, unworthy of much attention. My father's civilization was hardly something you could call a good neighbor to the nearby worlds, and as a result of long term misbehavior, we attracted the attention of and recently were annexed by an extremely evil empire, seeking to use us as a supplement to their Armies. They had announced the development and release of technology that could scan people's battle power. Due to the __influence of traits I inherited from __my mother's side, I have an unusually high battle power for a person of my age and experience. Its actually been quite a problem, because I have trouble controlling my strength. I've been successful in keeping the truth hidden from most, but with the arrival of that scanner technology, the deception would have been discovered readily, and I did NOT want the attention it would bring."_

_ "I was hoping to hide away on Earth and work to get stronger, eventually returning to deal with the problem in the future. Along the way, we came across a species that had developed intriguing techniques that appeared to be able to warp space-time and other physical dimensions. Epistēmē combined knowledge of FTL technologies from our 2 populations, as well as some concepts gleaned from designs stolen from the Empire in question into a machine that was intended to act as an instantaneous jump drive. It achieved what it was able to do by applying what we had learned about the techniques used by this species, but in a different way, as their method only appears to work for organisms with battle power. Our method appeared to be successful, up until the point of failure that brought us here.__"_

"Why the interest in the Wards program?" Armsmaster asked.

_"My primary problems right now are that I don't have a legal identity, that I am too young to manage my own care according to your legal system, and that I am almost completely lacking in the ability to communicate without help from my friend here, as clearly I don't speak your language well and I can't read it at all. I don't have a very good understanding of the culture and history of your world either. If I were to attempt to survive on my own, I'd eventually have to commit crimes of some kind just to survive, even if it were only poaching wildlife and taking greens from public lands without permission. I would prefer a life where I am not constantly getting in trouble just for existing. Also, given the presence of Tinkers on this world, i'm hoping that one of them might be able to help us understand what went wrong with our jump drive, but that is a longer-term issue."_

"I'll have to go over these things with the director of the PRT eventually. Can you submit as much information as you can share to the same address you used before... actually it probably won't fit in an email will it. here" he wrote down a series of numbers with dots between them and wrote down a username/password combination with it. "upload as much to this FTP server as you can. I and several Thinkers and other Tinkers will look through the material. You mentioned a ship several times, and yet we've not detected it. Where is it? is there any danger of it being broken into or exposed in some way?"

_"It was originally developed as a science vessel intended to operate in and around areas of conflict that might erupt into battles or war at any time. It isn't a combat vessel in any respect, but it IS outfitted with the most advanced technology for the purposes of cloaking, hiding, and minimizing its EM signature as could be obtained or designed at the time. I've ensured it will remain undisturbed, and even if parahuman villains were to find it, precious few of them would be able to make a dent in it let alone break in. I'll eventually move it when things are more settled and the required authorities have been informed to expect it. My entire purpose in remaining hidden was to not cause a panic. I didn't intend to remain hidden forever, but dealing with a terrified population would cause complications that nobody wants."_

"Would you like a tour of the facility and to meet the current wards?"

_"Sure, I won't be able to talk to them very much at first, but if I am to work with them, meeting them is a good idea"._

"We'll be scheduling you for preliminary power testing later today at about 1:30 PM. Pending results of that, we'll be writing up a provisional contract and NDA forms. I'll need to get approval from the director of the PRT after writing up a report on our meeting. She has final say of what we can do about your situation. You will be meeting with her later on this evening as your last stop before you leave".

"I have some more questions, more for my personal curiosity than anything official" Armsmaster said.

Kotoro nodded.

"Who designed that drone? how did it get built. Are there many of them?"

Kotoro motioned at Epistēmē and told him _"I think you should answer that yourself"._

Epistēmē explained "I did, pulling from some of the features of the ship and some other things I've picked up from various sources. We have a lab of sorts on the ship with several different production machines and fabrication technologies. We're running a bit low on supplies. I'm sorry, I just realized I haven't introduced myself yet. I am Epistēmē. I am the AI and owner/operator of the ship that brought this young man here. I have collaborated with his mother for a little over 20 years, and stayed behind to guide and monitor the boy in her absence when she was called back home to issue a report. She was unable to return due to the events that caused us to flee the situation. Before we began our field tests, I made sure a message detailing everything we were about to do would reach her where she is, but it will take several years for it to reach its destination, as I sent it in a way that ought to make it undetectable by unwanted eyes and that method takes a longer time as it couldn't take advantage of our more modern, but less secure transmissions protocols. I used a very low power FTL rocket with a simplistic guidance system. Its essentially a message in a bottle, with such a low signature that it shouldn't be noticed by anybody of import before it reaches her. She ought to be able to assemble an improved prototype, but I do not know if she could re-create the circumstances that brought us here or not. I advised that in the event we failed to reach our destination, they should put the designs in the hands of the astrophysicist and multi-dimensional physics experts on their world, and see what they could figure out before attempting another test run. They have the coordinates of the world we departed from, in case that becomes relevant."

Armsmaster was obviously intrigued. "an AI with enough agency and sufficient creative intelligence to create designs. Fascinating. It communicates so fluidly and easily. You're well beyond anything produced on this world without the aid of tinker powers. The secrets of your software design alone would be worth billions."

"This 'it' happens to identify as male and has a name. We will of course be willing to share such blueprints and design specifications when we have built a relationship of trust. I will have to consent, but I will be relying on this young man for his assessment of your trustworthiness as well." Epistēmē said.

"and now you're offended, absolutely fascinating. Oh... i'm sorry, I meant no offense." He said, turning back to face Kotoro.

"As for you young man, as you have not selected a cape name, are you comfortable sharing your given name? We'll be needing something for the legal forms so you'll probably be sharing that with us anyway. We'll keep it in confidence. We take the secrecy of identities very seriously." Armsmaster said.

_"My given name is Kotoro. My mother picked it, or i'd likely be named after an anagram of the word for some kind of vegetable. We do not have a custom of middle names in either my father's or mother's culture. __As for a surname, i__n my father's culture most do not have family names. Sometimes a clan is granted a title that they use as a surname, and the royal family collectively refers to themselves using the given name of the first king, which has also been the given name of each generation's first born. My mother's family name is Shinoto. I will use that."_

"A piece of advice. If you don't pick a cape name soon, the public relations department will probably choose one for you, either based on some thematic costume designs they cook up , or your abilities. Their sensibilities often leave much to be desired. I urge you to come up with something you like, because if they pick it, you'll be stuck with it until you can join the protectorate as an adult."

"_My father had wanted to name me Negitama, and sometimes called me that as a nickname. Maybe I could use that as a cape name." _Kotoro said.

"It lacks the impact that a cape name constructed from English terms can have, but i'll put it down as a tentative name, in case you come up blank, to save you from having something decided on your behalf. Lets go have you tour the facility and meet the wards" Armsmaster said, rising from his chair. "follow me." 

[Authors note: I am not yet decided on what the character will use as a cape name. Feel free to issue suggestions. If I see anything I like i'll let you know!]


	6. Ch 5 Meet the wards

[Author's note: to the anonymous reviewer, thank you for your feedback. You have made a very salient point, and as such I am rewriting the chapter. He will still be admitting to being quite powerful, but hes not going to be so in-your-face with how serious a threat he actually is. Given the change from being totally open about his abilities, he's going to have to come up with a plausible excuse regarding his avoidance of nights with a full moon. Also, for the record, i'll be 35 within the month. All hail "Guest" the unnamed hero who saved me from myself!]

PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Hallway to the Common Room; March 15 2008 11:00 AM

Armsmaster led Kotoro through the maze of hallways and stairs back to where the Wards staging area was located. On the way Armsmaster had asked Kotoro to elaborate on what he was able to do, so he could make plans for powers testing.

"There is a long hall here with an assortment of motion detectors and video cameras. When the system detects that someone or something is moving within this space toward the Wards' Common Room, it triggers a warning so the Wards can mask up before the parties arrive. We usually pre-empt the security systems with this button here {he gestures toward a big red button on the wall}, but it actively scans for vibration, visual stimuli, air movements, etc, as well, in case someone either forgets or deliberately doesn't push the button. Its not perfect, but it works even on most strangers. Its utility with movers is questionable, as some are so fast that they render the warning somewhat moot, but if we ever have a hostile mover this close to the wards, we've already failed as guardians on multiple levels. We do what we can to protect them." Armsmaster explained.

As they turned the corner and entered the door to the Common Room, Kotoro noticed several red lights and a keening alarm. There was a couch with a TV and some gaming systems and a small Kitchen off to the side with a dining table, a sink, several cabinets and an oven/stove combo as well as a microwave. There were several smaller halls branching from the shared space that led to personal rooms. There were enough for many more wards than the ones currently employed here.

Epistēmē had previously informed Kotoro that there were currently 3 wards, Triumph, Gallant, and Aegis with some basics about what they usually wore when appearing in public. Their themes apparently translated to their casual-wear masks, as they weren't suited up, but he could still pick them out given that he knew what their usual costumes looked like. Triumph's mask was a yellow gold color and lion themed, Aegis's mask was a rusty blood color which left his eyes exposed, and Gallant's mask had a metallic sheen to it, even though it wasn't his usual helmet. They had been waiting for his arrival, all standing together in the common area near the entry.

Motioning to Triumph, Armsmaster said "Triumph, this young man is a prospective candidate for the Wards. He hasn't chosen a cape name yet. He doesn't speak English very well, but he has the aid of a translator there {points at the drone}." and turning back to face Kotoro he said "This is Triumph, the current leader of the Brockton Bay chapter of the Wards. He will take over from here until I return. I need to be debriefed by the director, and begin arranging for your power testing."

Triumph offered his hand to Kotoro to shake "Hello, would you like anything to eat or drink? we have some leftover pizza in the refrigerator and some soda! Until you select a name I'll be calling you 'mask', or simply use pronouns."

"I will eat" Kotoro said. He had yet to sample any earth cuisine, and he WAS hungry, though they probably wouldn't have enough food on hand to make him full. Most Humans did not eat nearly as much as Saiyajins from what Kotoro had observed. "I hear of you. Good things. Value Honor. Strong principles. Respect!"

Triumph smiled wide, saying "Thanks. You on the other hand are a complete mystery. Usually when someone comes to the wards they were either discovered during cape activities and offered a membership pitch, or dragged in by their parents. What brings you in?"

"difficult to say, will use translate." and began to speak to Epistēmē to lay out what he should tell them.

"We are from an alternate universe. We were trying test newly developed jump drive technology and accidentally landed here. This young man helped me to build and engineer the devices in question, though I am the primary designer. If either of us were to be given a tinker designation I'd probably be the one. He is highly skilled for his age in engineering, though he still needs a more thorough education to round out his natural aptitudes. My skills aren't a power-granted ability, so it would probably be a tinker 0 rating at best. That is NOT to say that I can't make significant contributions here though."

Not sure how to respond to that, Triumph led Kotoro to the Kitchen and heated up the remains of the previous night's dinner. While Kotoro ate, they continued their conversation.

"I'd heard of cases of parahumans from alternate earths, but I've never met anybody who was FROM an alternate universe." Aegis commented.

Triumph spoke again, asking "What are your powers? If I may be bold, are you comfortable talking about your trigger?"

Kotoro spoke to Epistēmē again, telling him to play this close to the chest until they could determine how trustworthy and discreet the wards could be. The AI then began to explain his charge's abilities, "Based on what I've read of your cape slang, he would be most succinctly described as an Alexandria package with blaster powers. He can can manipulate a metaphysical force that we refer to as KI, allowing him to emit energy blasts, withstand powerful impacts, resist damage from EM spectrum lasers and beams and projectiles, resist temperature related damage, fly and run at high speeds. He has a high baseline resistance to damage and accelerated healing."

Epistēmē decides to tell a white lie to avoid the issue of trigger event and lack of corona pollentia & gemma. "As he got his powers as a baby, nobody knows how or why he triggered. There are some minor physical mutations, so he might have undergone something similar to what causes case 53's."

"I don't see any obvious mutations" Aegis said. Upon hearing the translation of that comment, Kotoro pulled his tail out of its hiding place and pointed to it.

"Oh man, sorry for being insensitive. Still... you lucked out there, you look mostly human. There are a lot of case 53s who look like monsters or animals." said Aegis.

Epistēmē continued "As for the reason why we approached the wards; we have no resources here and no legal identities. The PRT and Protectorate appear to be the local authority governing events concerning those with strong powers, and we felt there was sufficient overlap in purpose and precedent for case 53s being helped that it was worth trying out. We intend to try to figure out a way to get back to where we came from, but we have every intention of trying to help out while we're living here, so it seemed the most straightforward thing to do. He'll be going out and participating in cape fights regardless, but we still need a place to live and food to eat."

Triumph interjected suddenly, "Armsmaster mentioned in his briefing to me that he has trouble holding back his strength sometimes. That isn't unusual with brutes actually, but it can be problematic. How bad is it? Definitely make sure the staff are aware of that before doing anything during power testing. They're insured for equipment breakdown, but you need to make sure that you don't risk collapsing the entire room by accident. If that happens we'll have both OSHA and the youth guard breathing down our necks again."

"Your powers!; How get? How work?" Kotoro asked.

Aegis answered first. "I was bullied pretty badly for a long time. I tried to get help with it, but nobody would take it seriously. The bullies banded together one day and paid one of the gangs to mess with me. A bunch of thugs abducted me and beat me for hours. I would have died if I hadn't triggered. I can fly, and my body adapts to damage with redundant functions to keep me going and alive. If someone blinds me, my skin might take over by producing photoreceptors and acting as a makeshift retina. If my liver were damaged, my fat cells might start cleaning my blood and processing nutrients in its place. I don't really feel pain as such anymore. I do get a sensation indicating where I'm damaged and how badly, but it isn't nearly as distressing as I recall pain being before I triggered."

Triumph spoke next. "I don't really like to remember or talk about my trigger, but I'm happy to explain my powers. I can manipulate sound. I can release sonic bursts with customized power and shape to use as an area or precision attack. I'm also stronger than normal, and I heal fast with almost no scarring."

Gallant explained his powers last. "My trigger is too painful to discuss and share, i'm sorry. I can sense emotions and fire beams of emotion manipulating concussive blasts of energy that pack a punch. I can choose how to fire it and shape it to some extent. Don't go spreading that around though. People are spooked by powers like mine, so we tell the public that i'm a tinker. Armsmaster makes me some technical-looking gizmos and I wear metallic armor to fit the whole gallant knight theme".

Seeing that Kotoro was done with the food, Triumph stood and cleared the table for him, and suggested that they occupy the couch and put on the news or some mildly interesting show in the background and chat a bit more to get to know the newcomer better in the time remaining before Armsmaster returned.

PRT ENE Building Armsmaster's lab, Hallway to the Common Room; March 15 2008 11:25 AM

Armsmaster eased back into his chair, having just finished his report on his initial conversation with the prospective ward, including a dump of his lie detector readings and his conclusions based on these. These were wondrous times. He'd never expected something this earth shattering to just walk in and fall into his lap. Assuming this wasn't some kind of elaborate hoax, Humanity had finally been hand delivered evidence that in at least one universe, there was life on other worlds. The Centurion and Saiyajin people could probably have been explained away or hand waved as a lost ancient human culture that had taken to the stars, as all available data pointed to their demonstrably being offshoots of homo sapiens. The data shared from the Galactic patrol database on the other hand had detailed records of a myriad of decisively non-human species, and the recordings of the conversations that Kotoro and Epistēmē had had with the people of Yardrat on several occasions had audio features in the recorded voices that were simply not possible for human anatomy to produce. It was all so fascinating, and he was the one who would be able to write the initial publications on the subject! And that AI! It was so fascinating to be able to hold a conversation with what was essentially highly complex software!

Stop, he reminded himself, you know that at some point of cognitive complexity there is effectively no difference between an AI and a flesh-based person. Don't offend the AI, you're bad enough with regular people as it is. He sighed, having put himself in a bad mood again. His career trajectory was stalling, and he didn't know what to do to salvage it. Those issues were for another time however. He forwarded his report to Director Piggot, and thinking for a moment, sent a copy to Director Costa-Brown as well. He didn't want to anger Piggot, but this was too important to wait to filter up the chain slowly.

With that done, he had some minutes available to tinker before he had to switch to the task of planning the power testing regime he would advise the team to employ for their new prospective ward. He returned to a project he had been thinking of as a possible anti-endbringer weapon utilizing nanotechnology to sever molecular bonds and disintegrate a target into constituent atoms. This project was in the very early stages, pushing the boundaries of both mundane science and his tinker-power driven abilities. It would probably be quite some time before it was ready for deployment. It wasn't just that the concept itself would need to be fleshed out more into a proper blueprint, but it would be likely that he would need to retool his shop and build iterations of the machines that would be needed to construct the technology.

As he worked, he received an incoming connection request with an identifier he recognized well and authorized the call to connect. "working on a new project Colin?" Dragon asked.

"I'm revisiting an idea I had a while ago, its been languishing, but it has real promise." He sent her a copy of the specs, knowing she'd be able to read and understand faster than he could explain with words. "I think it will prove to be extremely useful when I complete it, but i'm really just filling some open time with tinkering to remain efficient and productive. We've had a much more interesting set of developments today."

"Oh? What would that be? Any major issues with the gangs in the city?" Dragon asked?

"Nothing like that no. At least nothing that has been brought to our attention yet. The answer to the Fermi Paradox walked into our offices this morning and asked to join the wards. I'm still not sure how to react to what I've learned. I'll be releasing a copy of the data and records to you as soon as the Protectorate and PRT authorize it."

"What, an alien?"

"Assuming he is telling the truth, yes, and even then only technically. There are confusing complications with regard to that. As far as that, the ward candidate isn't the most interesting bit, although if his powers work the way he claims, he'll be a definite asset for the side of law and order. He has a database full of technological designs the likes of which humanity has never seen, and records from a civilization that is essentially a federation of sapient aliens across most of a galaxy. We still have to verify it all as much as we can, but of those things which I CAN check, everything so far has been accurate. He also had an AI traveling with him. Its so sophisticated that I wouldn't have known if it hadn't told me. Its unlike anything we've seen before. If I hadn't had the chance to comb through this data dump myself and observe everything, I'd have been inclined to declare it all lunacy and a hoax, but every time I try to test an aspect of what he has given us, its turned out to be accurate, at least as far as the scientific principles within my reach at the moment. It makes me inclined to be more trusting, although he could just be a very insane thinker or tinker. We have yet to do power testing."

"An AI sophisticated enough that you couldn't tell it wasn't a human on the other end? How will you be describing this to Piggot and the PRT?" Dragon asked.

[Author's note: As a friendly reminder, the two OCs have not yet revealed the full truth regarding him being an entirely unrestricted and unchained AI, and what that entails. The PRT / Protectorate are thus only aware of the degree to which he is cognitively sophisticated, which is impressive enough by Earth Bet standards.]

"In glowing terms provided he continues to behave as he has so far. I'd be lying if I wasn't concerned about the potential threat that an AI could pose, but it ... he ... revealed itself ... himself? ... willingly. If it ... he... wanted to cause damage it could have done quite a lot before we ever discovered the truth. I'd say that should earn it, I mean him, some amount of credit, barring the influence of paranoia or phobias. I'm so bad at this {he sighed}, he pointed out that he identifies as male and has a name, but my brain keeps defaulting to impersonal pronouns."

Something in Dragon's countenance changed. A wistful look took over her face for several moments, but the moment passed, and she said nothing to acknowledge it. When she did finally speak, it was all business "I'd love the chance to meet him later, after all the paperwork is finished. By the way, your time just ran out, its nearly 12:15. I know you've got to go, so i'll take my leave. If you would like to collaborate on that technology, I think i might be able to help push it along in development. There has been a boom in nanotechnology from new tinkers lately, and I've been able to glean a thing or two from their designs and production techniques. Please don't come back to the lab and fail to sleep again tonight. I won't be able to babysit you and I would really prefer you to be in good health."

PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Common Room; March 15 2008 1:15 PM

As they were chatting, Kotoro had noticed that Gallant had kept sneaking odd looks at the drone and frowning slightly throughout the conversation, but still hadn't said anything about it. "Something wrong?" he asked pointedly?

"My powers are giving me odd signals. I keep getting flickers of emotion coming from your drone. I've never gotten a read on a device like that before." Gallant said.

Armsmaster had silently entered the room a few seconds earlier, observing the conversation without interrupting. He spoke now, hypothesizing "Maybe its because Epistēmē is an advanced AI? His core apparently involves emulation of the cognitive processes that result in consciousness in organic minds. Perhaps your power is picking up on his emotional states, but is getting confused because its not contained by a brain, causing it to be unreliable? You've mentioned in the past that you had trouble with people who weren't neurotypical, and an AI is anything but."

"I've submitted an initial briefing to my superiors and altered the staff in power testing to expect you and have come to collect and escort you there" he said, turning to Kotoro. "Follow me please." with that he turned and exited the room, with Kotoro trailing behind.


	7. Ch 6 Power Testing & Director Piggot

PRT ENE Building; Power Testing Labs: Armored Bunker; March 15 2008 1:15 PM

Armsmaster led Kotoro down underground into an area off to the side from the rest of the building to a location which appeared to be a heavily reinforced structure split into different labs suited to testing different kinds of powers.

"I will be observing, but most of these tests will be carried out by medical and science staff. I've provided suggestions based on your description of what your powers are and how your powers work, but the remainder is up to them. If you do decide to join up, I may occasionally ask you to use your powers in my lab with some higher powered sensor arrays and do more in-depth study about the mechanisms of your powers, but for today you'll be undergoing more standardized power testing. Before we do any of that however, we'll be doing a medical exam and providing you with a barebones costume. We need to make sure that people aren't relying on tinker-tech that they're hiding from us or incapable of producing themselves, perhaps being supplied by another cape.

If you were a tinker, we'd be testing your tech separately. Rarely, some tinkers obtain a grab-bag of powers, so they'll be in for more than just tech-review and safety checks. As you aren't a tinker, none of that applies to you. Just be careful not to do too much damage if you can help it, unless the techs specifically ask you for more.

They arrived at the medical room and a wizened old lady, with her white hair tied neatly in a bun, was in the room reading Kotoro's dossier muttering to herself about how crazy everything has been for the last 28 years and despite that things keep getting weirder. Hearing their footsteps, she stood, adjusted her glasses and leaned on her cane. "The man of the hour! If you're willing to put up with this ol' biddy for just a bit, I'll have your vitals all measured right quick. My name is Dr. Eleanor Hill, like the one I'm over." she cackled to herself gleefully. "Nice to meet you young Kotoro, if you'll take off your britches behind the curtain there and put on the green gown like you see in the picture on the wall, we'll get started."

When Kotoro emerged, Dr. Hill started for a second, recovering quickly, "well that's somethin' else. You've got a tail. Armsy didn't mention that in his briefing, so I'm guessin' it didn't come up.". She looked him over on all sides "Don't see no tattoos though, not sure what to make of it. Sometimes powers bring minor mutations, guess its one of those." Dr. Hill worked fast getting readings such as body temperature and blood pressure, and checked his ears, nose, throat, eyes, and skin for lesions and damage.

Soon enough she ran into a snag. "Dy'a mind helpin' me out lad? Can you you pierce just a tiny place on your fingertips for me and another place on your arm for the other needle? I can't seem to get the needles to go in." Kotoro manifested a tiny, but still high powered, KI blade, and did as directed, allowing a small blood sample to be collected from his finger and a rather larger sample from his arm. Both wounds healed closed within the next minute when the needles were removed. "That's some mighty fast healing m'boy, and there ain't no hide nor hair of the holes ya made remainin'. Reckon that'd make surgery a pain in the keister though." Finally she arrived at the tail. She stared at it for a while, clearly fascinated, eventually resuming her exam, lightly tapping on it commenting "I don't rightly know how to check the health of this, but I'd like to get an image of it in the MRI all the same. If nothing else it'll give us a reference state in your charts for later." She led Kotoro into a back room where a noisy machine was waiting and had him lie in the center of it while it did some scans of his body.

Before long she'd completed the scans, and ushered him back to the main room. "Yer about the healthiest thing I've laid eyes on in a long time, near as I can tell. Yer all done here boyo. Not unlike other brutes that have come through here, ya don't have much in the way of body fat. You're sculpted, but you're not beefy. Blood chemistry and RBC / hematocrit will be measured within the next day or two. We'll have ya come back now'n'agin if ya join up for periodic tests checkin' your metabolism and such. Not that you look like you'll need it, but we research people with powers as much as we can. Have fun with the rest of your tests! ... If you can..." she trailed off, knowing that the power testing usually bored people by the end.

Next was brute testing. The group of technicians running this testing facility weren't very talkative and were all business, simply giving orders regarding where to stand and what to do. They started out slow with each new damage type, ramping up slowly. Of the various things they subjected him to, which included blunt force, projectiles, explosives, sharps in stabbing and slicing form, and more, almost none of them did anything notable. Eventually they hit their limits on what was available and how hard they could hit and had to stop for lack of anything more they could try. One tech suggested checking if he was immune to radiation, but they quickly nixed that idea, as if things went poorly they might make him ill without warning or any way to mitigate the damage.

Kotoro figured he must be at least a little resistant, as the Saiyajin piracy operations had faced radiation based weaponry in the past to no immediate significant ill effects beyond a short duration of slight weakness and nausea in the weaker warriors. Increased exposure might do more though. He had no intention of telling anybody about that particular aspect of his past if he could help it. At least not until he had built up some trust and good will. Even then, he wasn't proud of his participation anymore, even though he had been at the time.

Eventually they ran out of ideas, and they made the switch to testing how hard HE could hit things. He put a fist sized hole right through the first blunt force measuring machine they tried, despite trying to hold back, and when he tried to dissipate the force of his next blow to avoid putting a hole in the next one, it crumpled into a heap. Giving up on getting direct numbers, they had him strike various materials in different ways to see how they deformed or reacted, taking notes all the while. Eventually they ran out of new things to have him hit, or ways for him to strike, and they asked him to demonstrate his rapid healing again by damaging himself in a small site on his arm much like he had in the doctor's office, observing the entire process with high speed cameras. After that, they ushered him to the next set of tests in a neighboring lab.

The next tests were of his blaster abilities. There were a great deal more sensors in this room. They had him do similar things that he had previously done with his limbs, but this time with his ki blasts. He had a bit of an easier time manipulating KI directly as opposed to modulating its effect on his muscles and physical might, although not enough to stop him from obliterating a good number of the weaker test dummies and targets. When he demonstrated the ability to levitate objects with his ki, they experimented a bit with that as well.

He had mentioned that his powers would improve over time through training and use, but that wasn't easy to test on a short time scale, especially given their current inability to measure precisely how strong and resistant he was, so they relegated their investigations into that aspect of his powers to longer term observation of his performance in the field. He had not told them about the Saiyajin ability to gain boosts in strength from surviving near brushes with death, and even if he had, they didn't have anything on hand that could harm him enough to demonstrate it. It was unlikely they'd be willing to try to test that kind of thing anyway, due to their ethics guidelines and regulations.

Finally they put his mover powers to the test. They asked him to activate his flight powers, scanning him with all manner of different devices while he did so, and to demonstrate his super speed. Not wanting to show them quite the full extent of how fast he could be, he held back from putting in full effort, and tried to aim at being impressive without being overwhelming. They also had him demonstrate the extent to which he was able to interact with the world fully while employing these abilities, which, as he had told them, was as much as he normally could. They had him clocked at just under the speed of sound, although he knew he could travel much faster if he pushed himself. He'd save those demonstrations for later, if ever. Hopefully he'd get a chance to demonstrate he could be trusted and they'd be less spooked by the truth in the future.

Kotoro ended the power testing session hoping that he'd demonstrated himself useful while sandbagging enough to prevent them from seeing him as an imminent threat. Armsmaster met him as he exited the final testing lab, handing him the equipment and armor that he had shed in the doctor's office.

"You may put these back on. Thank you for your cooperation. Its good to know that your powers do not cause you to emit any harmful radiation, gases, or materials that we'd need to be overly concerned about, aside from the blasts themselves. Director Piggot has been sent a complete briefing on the results we've compiled so far, as well as an abridged summary. She ought to be ready to meet with you within the next 2 hours to discuss what we can do for you. Until then you have some free time. As you've been quite busy for most of the day, you're probably hungry."

At that, Kotoro nodded vigorously.

"There is a cafeteria on the second floor. I'm scheduled to go on patrol in 10 minutes, so I'll have to take my leave for now. If you wait here, Ms. Militia will take over as your chaperone for the remainder of your visit today. She will escort you to the cafeteria for a meal, and later to your meeting with the Director."

PRT ENE Building; Cafeteria; March 15 2008 7:30 PM

Kotoro and the drone piloted by Epistēmē approached the main elevators, and waited for their new chaperone to arrive. Kotoro had been thinking all day long about the risk of being made to accidentally expose the truth of his Saiyajin nature regarding the moon. Given the lunar cycle was only about 28 days on this planet, and for a portion of the year night came earlier and earlier the further away you got from the equator, it was a real problem. He didn't want to remove his tail and give up the optional advantage that it provided should he need to call upon it, but he also did not want it to activate against his will. An idea had occurred to him while he had been working with the power testing technicians, though, which might put a band aid over the problem until a more thorough solution could be arranged.

"Epistēmē, do you think we could make a set of impact resistant goggles that could black out all blutz waves from passing through them, or barring the ability to be that selective, black out my vision entirely on schedule with the lunar cycle? It would make me somewhat less useful to the team to be fully blinded until I can learn how to do KI sensing, but I have done some training on how to deal with fighting blind, and my other senses are quite sharp, so I can probably make do if I can't beg off of my duties. It'd be easier to defend my using it by saying exposure to full moonlight causes me extreme discomfort or something, or we could tell a second half truth and say it makes my power unstable, as justification for using something like that so they don't order me to remove it."

"I don't know if I've got any designs that can screen out blutz waves. It never occurred to the Saiyajins that any such technology would be desirable or useful, so they never attempted to make anything like that. I'll start experimenting with the idea at the first opportunity. I'll need you to make an artificial moon for me while wearing blinders, so I can test what will block the waves and what won't, unless you want me to wait to test prototypes until the natural full moon comes out." the AI said in response.

"I think that would be best for now, at least until you can build me a set of reliable blinders, or if we can find a remote location to test it. I do NOT want to risk transforming where anybody can see it happen." Kotoro confirmed.

A young olive skinned woman in a military outfit met with Kotoro and introduced herself as Ms. Militia. Upon seeing Kotoro she looked a bit sad and clucked her tongue. "so young" she said under her breath. She held a green and black blur of energy that repeatedly reshaped itself into different sorts of weapons They were mostly firearms, but occasionally other types of weapons would appear as well.

"You are Kotoro and Epistēmē correct?" she asked? They responded in the affirmative and she motioned for them to follow. "I am Miss Militia. Armsmaster told me you're interested in joining the Wards. I'll be your escort for the remainder of the day. Please follow me to the cafeteria."

While they walked Miss Militia inquired about them. "I've only just gotten back from patrolling. I had a very brief glimpse at your dossier compiled by Armsmaster, but I haven't been able to read it in full yet or the addendum with initial power testing results. Do you mind filling me in a bit? I'm curious."

Epistēmē filled her in on the relevant details without revealing too much. She also inquired about Kotoro's parents and background. She was told that they weren't in the picture at the moment, but wasn't given much more than that, the AI indicating that there were some elements of their background that probably shouldn't be discussed out of closed doors as they might end up being deemed classified by the director or her superiors, but that the information was probably in the reports.

"Its been a long time since a parahuman triggered with a set of powers like that. Brutes who are also movers can be dangerous in combat. I prefer to remain at range and snipe, due to how my power works. Movers who can close that gap quickly can be a problem. I can usually take down a regular mover with a shot or two, but when they're also brutes it complicates things, especially if I don't know how their powers work to select an optimal weapon or ammunition for a quick and non-lethal takedown. My powers allow for a wide range of customized tactics, but brute powers can be tricky to work around. I'm glad you're on our side. Your mere presence could be a force multiplier, even just in terms of PR and acting as a deterrent to the criminal parahumans in town."

"We're glad to be of service Madam. I may not technically be a hero or a parahuman myself, but I'm certainly willing to offer logistical and tactical support to any organization my charge is working with. As for young Kotoro, hes been cooped up with me for months now. He needs to get some fresh air and socialize. Being stuck in the lab with me is no good for him." said Epistēmē.

Conversation slowed down after that, and Kotoro had enough time to get through one standard human sized serving of food by the time Miss Militia received word that the director was ready to see him. He was still hungry, but they weren't yet entirely out of provisions on the Techne, so he resolved to eat his fill later. He would raise the issue of his higher than normal food requirements during his contract negotiations though. He followed Miss Militia to the Director's office.

PRT ENE Building; Director's Office; March 15 2008 8:00 PM

When he entered the office, he found a heavyset blonde woman sitting at a well organized desk, whose face seemed to wear a permanent scowl. She leveled her discerning gaze on him and seemed to ooze disapproval with every fiber of her being as she looked at him, but whether it was directed at him or the world in general, he could not say. "Please have a seat. We have much to discuss. My name is Emily Piggot, pronunciation 'pig oh', do not pronounce the 't', and I am the director of the PRT East North East, situated here in Brockton Bay. I know you told a lot of your information to Armsmaster during his interview with you, but if I ask any questions i'd like you to reiterate. I would like to hear the story from you directly."

She asked how they had come to be in Brockton, starting with how they arrived within this particular universe. Kotoro, through his AI translating for him, explained how they were refugees fleeing conscription by an invading empire. She indicated concern about them being followed and Epistēmē explained the various methods they had used to ensure they would not have been tracked to their Earth by Kind Cold's forces, let alone another universe, and that he would be unlikely to have any interest or care to follow them even if he knew where they had gone. After her curiosity was satisfied, mostly involving any potential threats to Brockton and Earth Bet in general, as well as the specific circumstances and history of Kotoro himself, she moved on.

"Your power testing results are impressive. You are probably one of the highest rated brutes we've ever seen, and your other abilities are versatile and complement each other quite well. There are more specialized testing facilities oriented toward testing high level brutes located elsewhere in the country, but there tends to be a lot of red tape to get access for wards, especially those who aren't stationed nearby. We can put in for access, but it may be months or years before they grant it. This should suit us anyway, as you mentioned that you can get stronger, waiting shouldn't be an issue, and continuous testing with a power like yours may eventually become moot."

Privately she was quite worried that despite not technically being a parahuman, Kotoro would still fit the same mental caricature she had regarding capes being like a room full of toddlers all having been given AK47s. She still had a job to do, despite her misgivings. His powers could make him a danger, but he could also be useful, and he would still exist even if she turned him away. Putting a person like that out on the street with no legal status was a recipe for disaster, especially if it created bad blood between him and the heroes. There appeared to be far more positives in taking him on than it turning him away, and quite a few negatives for the latter.

"I'm willing to extend an offer, and to sweeten the deal for you a bit, given your circumstances, but we'll be setting some requirements and ground rules. Due to the expectations and norms of the culture in this country, and your age, you will need to be placed with a foster family or guardian. Due to the semi-frequent appearance of case 53s, there is a program already established with a list of volunteers who have already been through the required training and signed pre-emptive NDAs. We will also be requiring you to attend educational services. Ordinarily the wards are granted admittance to Arcadia if they're of high school age or a nearby affiliate middle school run by the same organization. However, as both of these are fairly prestigious, they do have minimum requirements that apply even to the wards, and i'm sorry to say, through no fault of your own, you won't make that minimum.

As such you'll be attending a public school based on the address of your guardians according to the normal school placement rules, but we'll be telling the administration just enough about your background, leaving out the classified details, to ensure that they understand why you will have not learned the usual world and cultural history subjects and you will be placed into an English as a second language curriculum until you can demonstrate fluency.

In order to maintain eligibility for participation in the wards, you will need to maintain at least a C average in your coursework, although you'll be facing some sanctions to ensure that you have sufficient time to focus on your studies if you don't maintain at least a B. Secondly, your debut as a member of the wards will be delayed until you can improve your English sufficiently to be able to appear at a public announcement and answer questions.

After you debut, operationally, you're forbidden from engaging non-brutes until you can get a handle on your powers. You're at risk of turning someone into hamburger. You indicated that this was in your plans, so see to it that you get right on that.

Lastly, I gathered from your descriptions of the culture where you grew up that your life was not unlike that of a child soldier. That kind of existence can cause harrowing experiences and psychological damage, even if one isn't aware of it. We cannot risk a ward having psychological problems, beyond the norm that we see in parahumans in general at any rate, so you'll be assigned to therapy sessions, though this will have to wait until your language skills have progressed enough to carry on a conversation without the help of your friend here."

She handed over a stack of papers, explaining "Other than those additional stipulations this is the usual wards contract. Look it over and see if you have any questions"

Epistēmē spoke up on Kotoro's behalf "We'll need to put in a stipulation regarding caloric intake. Kotoro's powers cause him to burn through calories at a much higher rate than normal, and as a result he needs significantly more food on an ongoing basis than a human usually eats."

Piggot's eyebrow raised, but the ever-present scowl remained firmly planted, "How much more?". After they attempted to explain she got the gist of it and cut them off with, "Its not a problem, we've seen effects like that in other capes. I'm sure we'll manage. I'll write something into the contract to cover that for you, but we'll have to deal with it on base, eating that much at school or out in public out of costume will almost certainly out you as a cape. Under no circumstances should you be outing yourself through any easily avoidable activities. You'll need to hide that tail somehow, I see that your current attire has a built in hiding function for it, we can probably replicate something that for your civilian wear, or at least provide you with the materials needed to make more."

She turned to face the drone. "As for you. You're not a parahuman, or technically a human at all, but despite that you appear to be capable of engineering and scientific feats that place you beyond the current human norm. I'm told your designs are replicable by non-tinkers. Given that, and your lack of powers, I suppose that means it wouldn't be technically accurate to classify you as a tinker, but since much of your technology depends on principles beyond our current understanding, they're effectively black-boxes without the accompanying theories, rendering much of it effectively tinker-tech for most of the world. As a result we're assigning you the classification of tinker anyway. It saves on the paperwork.

We can probably justify lifting the restrictions usually applied to tinker tech in the future, given that it can be understood by any engineer or scientist with appropriate education in the required fields, but until such time as our scientific community has had a chance to catch up, we will be instituting similar rules for your technology as for tinker tech. Consider it a work in progress. We urge you to consider affiliating or joining up with the protectorate in some form or fashion. It would make it easier for you to work closely with Kotoro in his endeavors with us.

We're not really sure how to proceed with this, as our legal system does not provide for recognition of persons who are not carbon-based organisms. We're wading into uncharted territory, and the nature of your existence could cause some people distress. Our culture has a history of fiction involving murderous AI which has implanted a fear of such technology into the public consciousness. We'll see what we can do for you despite that."

"It is ever thus. We have similar problems on my homeworld, despite the technology having been around for 5 generations to no ill effect. Thank you for your consideration Director" Epistēmē said.

"Don't thank me yet, this city is a powder keg ready to blow and we need all the help we can get. I've been requesting additional manpower from the Protectorate and Wards chapters in the rest of the country, but nothing ever materializes. Unless its home grown, but we have had little luck in that regard. We have the highest cape concentration per capita in the USA, but almost all of them are villains! You'll have your work cut out for you."

Epistēmē's scanners pinged on something and he directed his focus on the Director's body. She had clearly been on the receiving end of multiple nasty injuries. He resolved to try to do something about that for her. Even if she was a somewhat gruff and unpleasant person, a wrecked body like that had to be awfully painful and some of her organs were either not functioning at all or barely functioning. Some were missing entirely.

Epistēmē and Kotoro looked over the contract and discussed it. Everything looked to be in order, except for the ownership of the rights to his image. They agreed to amend the contract stipulating that only any emblems or costume designs created by the PRT's own image and PR departments would be included within said ownership and that Kotoro would benefit to a greater extent from the use of his image if it included his body and tail, such as in action figures as opposed to costume sales, and that any aspect of the costume that he and Epistēmē designed, or that which came from Saiyajin or Centurion culture and technology would not be owned by the PRT or Protectorate and would instead be for legal purposes wholly owned by Kotoro and licensed to the PRT for free as part of the contract. They forwarded this in electronic format to Piggot's email address.

After reviewing the changes, Piggot commented "I don't think the bean counters are going to like that change you made. They'll probably try to raise a fuss, but I think we can justify it given the power testing results and the fact that the stipulation is there in part to avoid accidental cultural appropriation on our part."

She printed it out and all parties signed on the dotted line. She also had everybody in the room sign NDAs regarding Kotoro's background, and had Arms-master sign his copy electronically via his visor, as he was still out patrolling. Certain aspects of Kotoro's and Epistēmē's background were being classified at a high level, so that only the leadership of the PRT and Protectorate would be allowed to know about it. They would present Kotoro to the public as a case 53 and would be somewhat more open about Epistēmē if he so desired, claiming that he was found with Kotoro, as that was pretty much the truth.


	8. Ch 7 Legal Identity Guardians and School

PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Common Room; March 15 2008 11:30 PM

After signing on as a Ward Kotoro finished out the rest of his day in the Ward's base. By the time he made his way up to the room the other 3 wards had already gone home for the day. He found the small attached barracks-like area to the side where Wards could store their stuff and sleep on days where they had to work late and couldn't get home easily, and selected a room that appeared to be unused. He was still hungry, and had been hoping to return to the Techne, but right now he was more tired than hungry. He laid down on the bed to get some rest.

* * *

PRT ENE Building Wards Base, Common Room; March 16 2008 7:00 AM

After Kotoro woke up and ate breakfast, a box and a half of some cereals that were in the cabinets in the small kitchenette as well as several bananas, Epistēmē filled him in on the progress that had been made on his case while he had been asleep. The government apparently had fast-track processing set up for stateless persons with no history due to the existing case 53 phenomenon, as papers and an ID had already been prepared. They'd had to do some back-calculations to approximate a birthday, which came out to be approximately Nov 24, 1995, but Epistēmē had said that the chosen date was probably as accurate as they were going to be able to get (based on amount of time that had been experienced subjectively from Kotoro's birth at any rate). They didn't see any point in specifying a time of day and just put down a randomly generated value. A birth certificate was generated and social security number was assigned and the pool of guardians had been contacted to find a best fit.

A childless middle class couple, transplants from the UK, who were naturalized US citizens, had stepped up to accept the sudden need for a guardian. Donald Gibbons, a contractor who specialized in construction, and Janet Gibbons, maiden name Hanover, a researcher with a PhD in microbiology who worked in a local College, lived to the west of the boardwalk, just outside the docks. They would be stopping by in a few hours to meet Kotoro and bring him to his new living quarters in their home.

The middle school associated with their address had already been contacted and had papers sent. A representative would contact them within the next day or two to begin the process of figuring out what to do in terms of Kotoro's admission and studies. He would likely have to take placement exams for the STEM subjects, though for subjects like social studies & English they were going to advise the school to presume that he needed to start at the absolute bottom. This too didn't raise many questions, as case 53's frequently had educational requirements like this.

As it was a Monday and school was in session, he would be visiting the school for the first time later today. The first order of business was to meet his new legal guardians and get them filled in on his situation. He also needed to talk with Epistēmē about whether, under what conditions, and when he would want to move the Techne. For now it was probably safer to leave it where it was hidden, but eventually they'd probably want to bring it out and possibly park it near the rig or PRT building. It was Epistēmē's choice ultimately, as it was his ship and currently was serving as his body. The Techne was fully capable of making an exit for itself under Epistēmē's direction, but it wasn't really capable of doing it quietly. In principle, the jump drive could be used for a very short range hop to simply teleport out of the cavity, but they didn't really want to risk doing that given the mishap that landed them here.

A buzzer sounded and strategically placed red lights lit up, indicating that someone was entering the hallway that led past the Common area. There was no telling whether it was a tour group, one of the other wards, a PRT worker, a protectorate member, or otherwise. Kotoro was expecting someone to come fetch him when his Guardians arrived. They'd be meeting in a conference room on one of the lower levels. Putting on the domino mask the PRT had provided, Kotoro exited the room where he had slept, as a pair of adult capes entered the Common area. A woman wearing blue circuitry themed armor and a helmet with a visor and a man wearing a red domino mask and a solid red outfit that was lightly armored entered together.

"I'm Assault, and this is Battery. We're members of the local protectorate. We heard that you signed up and since we had business in the PRT building this morning, we wanted to meet you before heading back to the rig" the man in all-red said, offering his hand to shake.

Kotoro accepted the handshake. "Nice to meet. I not pick name yet." he explained. "you see Armsmaster notes?" he queried.

"Actually no, we received a notice and basic report from Director Piggott last night. We also have some partially redacted notes and documents in our inboxes from Armsmaster, but we only gave them a quick once over. We'll have time to read them later on. We wanted to introduce ourselves and satisfy a bit of our curiosity in meeting you. Piggot says your debut is being delayed until you can make a proper showing at a press conference. That sucks! You probably want to be out doing hero things right?

We've never had a problem introducing foreign capes who struggle with English in the Protectorate. Still, I guess that it is understandable. PR is a bit more important with the Wards right now with how difficult the Youth Guard has been lately."

"I hear many things about. Youth Guard sound annoying." Kotoro said.

"Their hearts are in the right place, but their demands can cause problems. They want to make sure that we don't treat the Wards like child soldiers." Battery said in partial agreement.

"My life before, could describe as child soldier. Wards probably are child soldier, even if not look like. Not like how I see on internet, in Africa and Arabian Peninsula. Those much worse treatment. Like slaves. Youth Guard worry about how looks. Not worry about how is." Kotoro said.

"My my, I think the boy is smarter than he looks, puppy." said Assault at the same time that Battery was saying "they are NOT child soldiers".

"Ah but they are puppy, in everything but name. We protect them and try to prevent them from fighting the super-villains and gangs if we can, but they're in training to join the Protectorate and they frequently come to blows with villains despite our efforts. With how everything is going lately, even the police could be thought of as a paramilitary organization, and the PRT forces certainly are. They have to be to be able to keep up with cape shit, even though the PRT is supposed to manage most of that, the cops still run into it sometimes and have to protect themselves. Cape business demands it. People prefer to frame things a certain way to satisfy their consciences." Assault said.

"I still think it is different. Don't let any civilians hear you say so. Don't say it in earshot of Piggot either. You'll catch hell over the PR disaster it might cause. " Battery said. Assault just shrugged in response.

Assault decided to change the subject. "I read that you're a very powerful brute and a very fast mover too. It'd be interesting to compare your speed to puppy here. She can go pretty fast when she wants. I'd also like to test how your power interacts with mine. I can absorb and store kinetic energy for later use, it can make for some fun power combos with movers and brutes. It doesn't have to be right now. It can wait for later. We have a scheduled patrol pretty soon anyway. We'll have to schedule a spar or something."

"I think read notes first good idea. Break many things in power test. Not want to hurt." Kotoro said hesitantly, paling a bit at the thought of what he might do to a standard human in a spar even if he was being careful.

"Will do. My power is a striker power, but it makes me almost as durable as a brute as long as i'm aware of incoming attacks. It lets me take impacts that would normally crush or squash a person without any damage." Assault explained.

* * *

About little while later, after Kotoro had explained the basics of his powers and background, with Epistēmē's help, leaving out the classified bits, the buzzer sounded off again and the red lights lit up. A few minutes later a PRT security officer entered the room and summoned Kotoro to accompany him to a conference room in the sub basement. He waved goodbye to Assault and Battery and followed the man.

PRT ENE Building; SubBasement 1; Conference Room A; March 16 2008 9:00 AM

Kotoro entered the room. A middle aged couple were seated at the table, across from a dark skinned man in a PRT uniform and Director Piggot. The man's dark brown hair was slicked back, and had some intruding grey strands. He was dressed in a dark buttoned shirt with a collar, and work boots. The woman's black hair was in a pixie cut, and she too had some intruding gray hairs, though not quite as many. She was wearing all black, a dress, with leggings and heels. The only color on her person was a royal blue scarf.

The escorting officer silently left the room, leaving Kotoro in the care of the officials already present. Director Piggot stood and made introductions. "This is Thomas Calvert, a consultant working with the PRT who assists us in handling a lot of different time sensitive or security related issues that come up from time to time in addition to his regular duties overseeing the organizing and training of some of our squads."

"Nice to meet" Kotoro said politely, as Mr. Calvert nodded back at him.

Piggot turned to the couple seated at the table "These are Donald and Janet Gibbons. They'll be assuming the role of legal guardianship for you in your civilian identity until such time as you apply and qualify for emancipation or reach the age of majority. Janet works as a professor at a local college, and Donald works in construction." She motioned to Kotoro "This young man is Kotoro Shinoto. He approached us to join the wards just yesterday, and we are glad to have him, but due to his circumstances he will be faced with several challenges adjusting to life in Brockton Bay, as we went over before he was called in. We will be arranging for more detailed briefings in a more secure setting at a later date. They have already signed NDAs and have been told that certain elements of your background are to be treated as highly classified. We will not be addressing those topics today, however."

Piggot used the next several minutes to explain what ward membership would require of them, and the provisions and limitations that applied to Kotoro's case, which included a plan to study and master English as quickly as possible, as well as for his eventual public introduction as a member of the team. He would be doing corporate compliance training and console work for the immediate future as his official duties. They also required that he arrange to make use of their in house training staff, and possibly also find an appropriate 3rd party self defense trainer who could help Kotoro learn to apply his abilities with more fine-tuned control. The city had no shortage of martial arts dojos, boxing gyms, and other such trainers, and some even openly offered courses oriented toward training hero or rogue capes. Presumably some of them trained villains on the side as well, but they didn't openly advertise that.

Kotoro was advised to exercise due caution and wait to engage with 3rd party trainers until his costume and cape name had been designed and selected, and he had his debut. It would likely be nearly impossible for him to hide his identity, at least until he re-learned proper control and could hide his abilities, given his particular power set, so he was to engage in such services while in costume using his ward identity, once he had one.

She then handed a packet of material to Janet. "This is what we have been able to prepare and get started so far. You should be able to help complete the remainder of the school arrangements, we will manage our portion of the details and communications with the school administration. We will give you the remainder of the week to get acquainted and begin setting up your schedule before you will actually be required to start. You're set to start next Monday, as far as console duty is concerned."

* * *

The meeting had abruptly ended and Kotoro had been escorted with the couple to their vehicle. One of the cloaked drones accompanied them on the drive back to their residence. They spoke a bit during the drive, getting to know each other better.

Janet, much like his own mother, was an academic, although she specialized in a somewhat different area. She was involved in multi-decade long evolution research involving bacterial cell lines exposed to different selective conditions. It had originally been pitched to sudy the development of resistance to antibiotics, but had expanded into a more generalized investigation of genomic adaptation to different environmental conditions and metabolic stresses.

Don focused on home and office construction, but he also occasionally found work upgrading and maintaining the endbringer shelters and the occasional warehouse. Kotoro had seen construction sites in varying states of progress all over the city through the spy drones. He noted the humans required the assistance of a lot of heavy machinery, due to their limited strength. Perhaps he could assist them and help cut costs in his free time. At first during the demolition phase of re-building projects, as he wouldn't need a lot of control to knock down a structure, and it would provide him with an opportunity to practice, ensuring that he only crumbled or toppled a structure rather than utterly annihilating it into tiny pieces of rubble.

He mentioned that his union was in the process of merging with the DWA to improve bargaining power for everybody involved. The DWA had also recently branched into construction work, due to the limited amount of docks specific work available in the city, due to the blockage to shipping the sunken vessels created in the waters around the city.

Their house was medium sized. 4 Bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and dining room, and an extra, small side office sized room, with almost no yard to speak of. It had 2 floors with the bedrooms upstairs, a spacious attic, currently being used for storage, and a large unfinished basement, filled with all manner of wood and metal shop equipment.

Don showed him to the room he would be using. It was currently unfurnished save for a small cot sized bed. He explained the empty state of the room, "We weren't sure what you'd like to have in the room, so rather than waste our time and money and possibly disappointing you in the process, we figured we'd bring you to a bunch of stores and decide together, unless you have some stuff you'd like to bring in".

"I do have, but look very different. make people ask question. store is better idea. For short time, think should remove door. Put curtain. Until control strength better. I reinforce outside door, make hard break. Problem soon solve." Kotoro suggested.

"The director told me about your problem. I got to see some select footage of your power testing to drive the point home, so I understand. We'll work on it together. Let me go over any designs or plans for the door before you touch it, and i'll help you build it." Don said.

"I thank." Kotoro said.

Janet came back out from whatever she had been doing in the small office room. "We're to meet with the Principal of your middle school in about 45 minutes. Lets get in the car so we're on time. The traffic on local roads can be unpredictable."

* * *

The school had Kotoro take placement tests as expected. He tested quite high in STEM subjects, at a level beyond the test at any rate. It wasn't designed to differentiate between high school or collegiate level understanding, as this was a middle school. As expected his English results were poor, and his social studies and history were awful, due entirely to genuine ignorance and unfamiliarity. On the plus side his STEM scores meant he would have more time to focus on the material that he was weak on.

They would require him to attend phys-ed, due to it being a graduation requirement, but he would be given extra dispensation for privacy in the event he needed to shower or change. This was something not reserved for capes, as there were students with various psychological, physical, or medical-device issues that had to request similar accommodations, and shouldn't raise too many questions.

He would begin classes tomorrow. These earthlings took kids being in school quite seriously it seemed. He could already tell he was going to be bored. Hopefully the social atmosphere would make up for it and he could make some friends to hang out with. How bad could these earthling children be, compared to the Saiyajin brats he'd dealt with back home?


	9. Ch 8 Gangs Suck

Gibbons Home; March 17 2008 6:00 AM

Kotoro woke up early. While his life was looking to become significantly more comfortable than it had previously been in some ways, he didn't want to allow himself to become soft. Also, he'd been running on fumes for days now. He'd taken the chance to eat on several occasions, but the meals had been meager by his standards. He hadn't been able to eat his fill. There had either not been enough time, or not enough food on hand. In any case, he could solve both problems by making a short visit to the Techne. Jogging there and doing some shadow boxing and light training would get him some early morning exercise.

Kotoro put on one of his spare sets of street clothing mimicking armor, and placed the dirty one into the laundry bin. It ought to be machine washable, as the fabric was flexible in addition to being quite stretchy. It had to be. He descended the stairs, finding Donald and Janet sitting at the table having their morning coffee and tea respectively.

He voiced his intention to go out for a morning jog, but neglected to mention the Techne. Kotoro wasn't sure how much of his information had been shared with these two. He expected that some of the top secret stuff had been kept from them and wasn't eager to share everything with them right away. After they had earned some trust he probably wouldn't mind, but he didn't want to get on the PRT's bad side, and any additional people who learned of it became a potential leak.

"'s a bit early for that isn't it mate. You might run into trouble. Not that you couldn't handle it, but you don't have a cape name or a costume yet. Could put you in a spot o' trouble. 'specially if you hurt someone." said Donald.

"Will stay open place. Avoid gang. Not want fight." Kotoro insisted.

"If you really must, we'll permit it on a trial basis. If you get into trouble, we'll have to either prohibit it in future or have someone tag along with you." said Janet.

"'fore you go, in case we're out when you get back, we've put your school supplies into a bag near the door, and the PRT called to let us know they've scheduled you for a meeting with the Image department after school today. You're to head over there after school for a meeting at 5:45. They recommended you bring any ideas for a costume and cape name that you might have come up with already."

The jog was mostly uneventful. There were actually some gang members lurking about when he got closer to the waterfront, and a few fights brewing between members of the ABB and the Merchants in the areas where there were a large number of warehouses, but Kotoro was able to avoid them with the help of the spy drone network, which had adjusted its drone placement to optimize for the highest degree of coverage where he was going to be living, where his school was, and the Techne's hiding place as well as the most efficient routes between these locations. If things got really crazy he ought to be able to move fast enough to bypass any obstructions, or even fly over it, but the less he did to out himself the better, and there was always a risk that even if he moved faster than human perceptions typically allowed for, someone with a parahuman power might notice it anyway. Better to be safe about it until he had a cape identity to use.

He arrived at the Techne, and after ensuring that nobody was around, he ducked into the hidden entrance and boarded the ship. He quickly whipped up a meal with the assistance of the on-board equipment and consumed the first fulfilling meal he had had in days. The stockroom only had about a month's worth of proper meals remaining, but he ought to have something set up to deal with the situation with the PRT's help by then. He did some training for about 30 minutes, and took a shower before leaving.

Kotoro had chosen to take his bag with him instead of returning to the Gibbons residence before heading to school. He didn't see the point of lengthening his trip or taking the risk of his presence at the seafront in Merchant territory being traced back to where he was living. Instead, he jogged directly to school, arriving a bit early to give himself plenty of time to find his locker and first classroom.

Middle School; March 17 2008 8:00 AM

The assistant principal met Kotoro at the door. He introduced himself, but Kotoro wasn't really interested in his name. He was sure that if the man mattered the name would be repeated often enough that he would remember it, and if he didn't he could always look at the man's name tag or ask someone. He was a pale balding man past his prime with a few gray hairs and sagging skin but not yet elderly and decrepit. He seemed to have a kindly personality, or was at least a good actor.

He had been briefed on Kotoro's relative lack of exposure to cultural and societal knowledge. Due to the need to coordinate with the PRT, the school administration were privy to his status as a ward, although they weren't being told everything. The man explained that classes were held in 8 periods, with one of those periods serving as a lunch break. Classes were ordinarily arranged with 4 of what they called core courses, and 2 arts or electives and a flex period. There were enough students in the school that the students were divided up into 3 segments. Each segment had their lunch break at a different time of day. The administration had decided to have the lunches in mixed-age groups, as the age demographics were uneven, with there being a lot more 6th and 7th graders than 8th graders for some reason.

As Kotoro had shown strong competency in the STEM coursework, he would be focusing on doubling up on remedial work to pick up what he should have learned in K-6 for the other courses in his first 2 quarters, and then they would re-assess what to do going forward. The tentative plan was to have him take the 8th grader STEM courses where necessary (for official graduation reasons, to demonstrate competency), and allow him to test out of taking such courses where legally permitted. They were more interested in rounding out his education as much as they could than they were with having him stick to a "normal" schedule. Taking more English and history and literature courses would help with his acculturation anyway.

The first half of the day went by mostly as a confusing daze, getting used to the clockwork regime of period changes, walking from one class to the next, finding where everything was, and so on. He was approached multiple times by curious students who all asked basic questions about his past, with the implicit assumptions being so far off base that he wasn't sure how to answer them (obviously he couldn't tell them the truth). The cover story supplied by the PRT was that he was a refugee from an island nation sunk by Leviathan some number of years back, and that he had lost most of his memories due to amnesia. He didn't like pretending to have been an injured bystander in a lost battle, but it was in his interest under the circumstances. Few of them had more than cursory interest. They were mostly polite, but unmemorable and other than acknowledging him politely at first, they turned their attentions back to the class work and mostly ignored him.

He entered his remedial English classroom after his lunch period to find a concerning scenario. There appeared to be overt animosity between 3 groups of students.

One group, consisting of 5 students, were collected into the rear left of the classroom, were all wearing red and green in some form or another, had similar facial features and skin tones of a slightly darker shade, but not quite enough to be brown, and had mostly black hair, the ones who hadn't dyed theirs at any rate.

A second group, consisting of 6 students, were collected into the rear right of the classroom, were wearing red and black. There were all light skinned. They appeared to be trying to achieve some unity in their fashion sense, but Kotoro had nothing to draw on to understand it.

The third, smaller group, of 3 students, were seated at the rear center in a small cluster of desks. They were wearing very shaggy clothes, some with holes in them, had fairly unkempt greasy hair, and smelled like they had forgotten to shower.

These groups seemed to roughly correspond to the intelligence Kotoro and Epistēmē had gathered about the 3 major gangs active in Brockton Bay. They'd anticipated that the gangs would recruit fairly young members, but hadn't anticipated them being quite this young. Perhaps they were family members of existing gang members in the case of the ABB and Empire 88. The merchants were unscrupulous. They'd try to get anybody hooked on drugs regardless of age, and were always looking for dealers the cops would be less likely to hassle or suspect. Gang members of such a young age made a cruel kind of sense, once they were made aware of it, but it had been outside of their initial expectations, and seeing it in person rankled more than he would have predicted.

The remaining 14 students had attempted to separate themselves from this problem, sitting toward the front of the classroom, creating as much physical and mental distance between themselves and the others as they could get away with without getting the teacher involved.

Unfortunately for Kotoro, the only remaining seat was among the middle group in the rear. He pretended not to notice anything was amiss. About half way through the period, when they were released to work on english sentence structure and vocabulary worksheets, the troubles began.

One of the boys wearing black and red hailed his attention with hisses and asked fairly loudly "How can you stand to sit with that filth?"

Kotoro looked at the presumed merchant kids again. He noted that one was of darker complexion, but wasn't sure if it was that or their gang affiliation that the boy was referring to. He gave the boy a questioning look in response.

"You're sitting with a nigger, a hebe, and a gyspy, and all of them are filthy drug peddlers."

Ah, so it was an all of the above situation. While he recognized the skin color reference, Kotoro made a mental note to look up what the two other slurs meant when class was over. For the moment though, he responded with "Empire sells drugs though. How is different?"

The boy flinched a bit and attempted to deflect "they sell shit to the rich. Stuff like blow. Not heroin and crack. They don't sell the shit that makes the slums poorer and dumber. They want to make the city better and clean it up, not drag it down." Satisfied that he had defended the honor of his group, he turned back to his work. From that point forward whenever any of them addressed Kotoro or looked at him, they displayed negativity and open dislike.

"Is that why they killed that gwailou hero with that flower thing on her costume? At least we know what we're about. Killing the heroes is how you make the city cleaner? Talkin' out both sides you mouth. Both sides lie." one of the boys wearing red and green from the other side of the room said.

"Stupid bastard got what was coming to him. Kaiser disavowed any involvement and expressed disapproval of his actions." responded a boy from the black and red crowd.

A girl in the red and green group spoke in Kotoro's direction, more at him than to him, "You, your skin is a bit olive and your eyes look a bit different, you got any Asian in your family?".

Most Saiyajins had features that looked like a mix of Asian in terms of facial traits and skin tones and western in terms of build and body hair. The Saiyajin only seemed to care who was the strongest and most skilled, and were highly individualist. As a result they cared little for superficial physical features, so long as they did not combine to form an ugly whole.

The dominant phenotypic cluster of Centurions mostly looked like a mix of Mediterranean and Nordic features, but there were still sub-populations of both peoples with different physical features that these earthlings would have qualified as different races. From what his mother had told him, there had been some racial strife on her world in the distant past, but they had moved beyond it eventually.

None of these "races" from his ancestral populations directly mapped onto any of the earthling populations though in terms of trait combinations or culture, but he wasn't sure if that was the meaning she was reaching for or not. If they cared more about the physical traits, then to their estimation it might be the same thing as being Asian, but if culture was the point, he didn't have any common ground. He didn't really know how to answer, so Kotoro shrugged. "Maybe, I not know ancestry." Hearing his answer to this and the sound of his speech carrying an accent that could not easily be identified, the group in red and black scowled at him even more than before. After that, the more they heard him speak, the angrier they became toward him. He didn't know what he'd done to upset them.

The kids in the middle didn't really want to be involved in any of this argument or discussion and as class went on they began to visibly sink into their seats a bit and appeared to try to be invisible. The other two sides continued alternately jeering and insulting each other as well as hurling slurs and insults at the merchant kids for the rest of the class time. The kids in the front of the classroom did their level best to ignore absolutely everything going on behind them.

The teacher looked haggard and harried even at the beginning of class, by the end he looked like he needed a nap. He had never acknowledged the gangs or made any attempt to modify their behavior. It is likely he considered it to be a waste of time better spent on the rest of the students. Perhaps if they became a true disruption he might do something about it.

They were a distraction to his studies, but were also interesting, and potentially a source of information about the gangs. They would not know anything of great importance of course, but due to that fact they may let something slip about gang activities and movements that they did not KNOW was actually important. This could be useful, as annoying as it was. He just hoped they didn't make a habit of involving him after the novelty of his joining the class wore off.

After class, he noticed the Empire 88 members from his class looking at him and talking amongst themselves and with other people wearing similar colors in the hallways. After his next class, they began to interfere with him and intrude on his personal space in both subtle and overt ways. They would attempt to trip him. Shove him in the stairways. Bump into him when passing in the halls. Sneer in an attempt to intimidate him whenever he looked their way. Of course he had to work to respond to these actions as if they mattered. Taking a knee, pretending to fall, and so on, so as not to expose himself. It would not do for someone's attempt to trip him in the hall to end with a shattered ankle or broken tibia. He hoped they did not escalate to any attempts to cause serious injury, as those would not work, and so he would have to act to avoid them. It risked outing him. He supposed he would not overly care to dispense with the charade, but it would upset the PRT and endanger his guardians.

At the moment, he was under no actual threat, but it was tiresome and mentally taxing. In some ways they were even more aggressive than Saiyajin children. They were always looking to fight, but they weren't cowards about it, and they had a semblance of a sense of honor, at least with regard to other members of Saiyajin society. It wasn't like he could do anything about it though. He would have to endure.

At any rate, he had more incentive now for achieving proper control of his powers. Once he was back to normal, he'd be able to deal with these cowards in a more direct manner without revealing himself as an obvious superhero. At the moment, if he tried to fight them off, it would end poorly for everybody involved. Thinking again on what happened to the ballistic gel mannequin test dummies, Kotoro gave an involuntary shudder. As much as these people were overt assholes, they hadn't quite earned _that_.

The second half of the day finally ended, and Kotoro took his leave, putting up with the shoves and whatnot and reacting accordingly on the way out of the building. There was only one problem. Empire goons had apparently set up an ambush for someone or something near the school. Kotoro didn't know if he was the target given the recent attention, or if it was aimed at someone else. A number of youths in red and black were collecting along each of the possible routes away from the building.

Luckily for Kotoro, the ABB students had noticed this show of force and had called in reinforcements of their own. A small but growing crowd of people wearing red and green was growing in the distance and after a short time split and began to confront each group of entire goons. This distraction allowed Kotoro the opportunity to slip past the budding gang conflict.

Navigating the situation outside of school without being noticed cost Kotoro some time. He'd been hoping to have enough time to practice and train KI control, but instead he stopped at the house quickly and left a note for his guardians, picked up his communicator changed his outfit. He stashed a domino mask and some Saiyajin armor of standard design in a bag, and went back outside immediately to make his way to his meeting with Image.

Edge of the Docks South and Downtown; March 17 2008 4:50 PM

The situation that had begun near the school had apparently continued escalating while he was in the residential areas. The ABB and Empire 88 were both out in force. There were adults in the crowd now instead of just the middle school and high school aged youth. They were all over the place in the area from Docks south to Downtown and well into the commercial district. As Kotoro approached closer to the PRT offices the numbers shifted from being majority ABB to include a larger contingent of the Empire 88 thugs. When he reached the area near Arcadia High School, he heard the beginnings of gunfire.

Kotoro avoided the gang infested areas as best he could, but eventually he came upon a scenario he couldn't ignore any longer. The fighting had escalated so quickly that the normally wary citizens hadn't been able to vacate before things turned openly violent. Several families were sandwiched between Empire 88 and ABB forces near the entrance to a medical care center. Weapons had been drawn on both sides, but what made the situation truly dangerous were a few individuals on the Empire 88 side that had just arrived. A woman with a scar on her throat and a cage as a mask holding a pair of small scythes, a tall muscle-bound man wearing loose pants, chains, and a white and blue tiger mask, and a hairy scruffy greasy looking blonde guy wearing a metal wolf mask had arrived and the ABB members present were clearly terrified at this development. These people fit the information for Cricket, Stormtiger, and Hookwolf.

Kotoro didn't care all that much if the Empire 88 wanted to brutalize or kill willing members of the ABB, but Oni-Lee and Lung were known for press-ganging Asian people into their ranks who wanted nothing to do with them, and there were regular civilians in the line of fire, among which there were numerous people who didn't fit the Empire's preferred demographic. While the PRT and Wards program would likely be annoyed with him for getting involved, especially before his official debut and introduction to the public, there were people who needed help here, and no authorities or heroes were yet present to do anything about the situation. It was likely quite a number of people would die if he didn't step in. He just needed to make sure things didn't end in a way that made parahuman heroes look bad.

Having justified his involvement to himself, Kotoro found an undisturbed alley, put on his domino mask, and flew up to the rooftop while using the alley as cover. There he quickly donned his battle armor. This model took its theme from the armor worn before King Cold made his appearance and began supplying their higher tech battle armor designs, but retained all of the improvements, plus a few tweaks that Epistēmē had made, increasing its durability. The color scheme was a bright green for the shoulder guard and abdominal/leg plates and a vibrant blue for the rest of the armor portion. The bodysuit under-layer was black, while his gloves and boots were white. Once he was finished, he leapt into the air and descended to just above the middle of the fray interrupting the posturing and threats and negotiations the Empire and ABB were engaged in. They'd been trying to convince the white people in the crowd to leave while they kept the ABB busy, but the people in the crowd were too frightened by the situation to move, and they didn't entirely trust the Empire capes to protect them from any stray fire.

[author's note: remember what Cabba was wearing in Dragon ball super? Its similar to that in aesthetic, though obviously not in terms of coloration. It also still has shoulder guards and isn't quite as sparse with the coverage.]

All eyes were on him now. He spoke simply. "This ends. All of you", he pointed to the civilians "leave now. I will protect. Anyone try to hurt, I stop. They not like."

"Hookwolf, have you ever seen or heard of a cape like this?" Stormtiger asked.

"Not in Brockton. Little bastard has a tail, but he looks human otherwise. I've never heard of any capes like that at all." the shirtless blonde man replied.

Stormtiger turned back to Kotoro "What are you called kid?".

"My name no matter." Kotoro calmly said in response.

"A newbie then? Your first night out perhaps? You're making a mistake messing with us. I'm not usually inclined to give people a second chance, but if you walk away now, I'll let you live. There are more suitable targets present right now." Stormtiger said to Kotoro.

"New to city yes. Fighting? no. my life many fights. You not scare me." Kotoro said, assuming a fighting stance. The people in the crowd still hadn't moved. Kotoro began to form a protective mobile KI shell around them.

"We warned ya' and gave ya' a chance. We're not going lightly on you now." Hookwolf said, beginning to transform into a metal monstrosity composed of blades and hooks, vaguely resembling a wolf. The air around storm tiger began to shift around and affect the ambient light in strange ways around his hands and fingers and gusts of wind began to blow around the area. Cricket started the attack, and began emitting sounds that screwed with Kotoro's inner ear and messed with his sense of balance and orientation. Several of the ABB members and civilians began vomiting as they were within the area of effect. While disoriented, a sudden gust of wind pushed Kotoro into the ground hard, and he stumbled, not expecting the sudden downward force. Hookwolf slammed into him full force, clearly expecting to shred him or send him flying, and his metallic form bent and warped around Kotoro's form a bit from the impact.

Kotoro began to recover his sense of balance and to adjust to the ambient noise. It was still affecting him, but now that he was aware of its effects he could compensate better.

"My turn" he said.

He thrust his arms into the mass of metal pressed up against him and, gripping it solidly, tore it in half. One of the two pieces continued to move and warp and change shape, so he began tearing off more pieces, and finally slammed it against the ground several times, and punched it, and jammed it deeply into the asphalt, mostly embedding it there. Hooks and metal pieces continued to flow and stream from it, but it was weak activity and didn't reform with any kind of speed to worry about. It would probably take hookwolf quite a lot of energy and time to build himself back up enough to get free. Stormtiger was mid-lunge when Kotoro looked back up at him. Kotoro easily dodged him of course. Knowing that Stormtiger was not as resilient against damage as Hookwolf, Kotoro used the weakest Kiai he could summon to toss him at the nearest wall. The villain managed to slow his approach somewhat, but still hit the wall hard enough to hurt. Kotoro thought he heard a dull crack, and Stormtiger roared in pain.

When he stood again, one arm was hanging wrong. He made a throwing motion toward Kotoro with the other arm, saying "Their blood is on your hands boy". Shortly after several explosions rocked the surface of the protective shell behind Kotoro that was shielding the civilians.

They were unhurt, but this overt violence directed their way finally spurred the crowd into action in their own defense, and they began to flee. The ABB members also began to scatter, their fear of reprisal from Lung and Oni Lee for cowardice being outweighed by their immediate survival instincts. Cricket turned on Kotoro once more and amped up and varied her acoustic attack. Kotoro's vision began to swim and his balance was lost once more. He endured the experience for as long as it took for the civilians to escape. He knew he could take Cricket down but in doing so he risked breaking the unwritten rules. He wasn't supposed to kill deliberately, and under the influence of this ability, he lacked any kind of finesse. Any attacks he used that would be capable of ending the fight would likely end with her death, and since he wasn't currently in mortal peril, would be hard to defend. Since the risk to civilians was now over, he decided to make a hasty withdrawal. Using the fastest speed he could muster, channeling his KI a bit, he rocketed into the sky, taking a sharp turn and landing in the distance. Having regained his senses by exiting Cricket's range, he pushed himself a bit harder, using his super speed to reach his bag, stashed on the rooftop, and then quickly moved toward PRT offices, as he was now in danger of being late for his meeting.


	10. Ch 9 Branding

Skies above Brockton Bay Downtown District; March 17 2008 5:40 PM

Kotoro asked Epistēmē to connect his communicator to the most optimal method to report the encounter and its outcome. Epistēmē knew he could connect to the console system the protectorate and wards used when out on patrol, but hadn't been given authorized access to it and didn't want to upset the chain of command by showing how easily he could penetrate their security. Instead he used a telephony protocol to connect Kotoro to an call-in center and tip line intended for PRT employees and police officers. The wards didn't usually use it, as they ordinarily had access to a different comms system which had a faster response, but it would serve.

_"_PRT report line operator, to whom am I speaking?_" said a voice once the call connected._

"New ward calling, not select cape name yet. Can check Director Piggot if system not notified of me. Did power test other day." Kotoro said.

"We've been made aware of you. I see you've got an appointment with Image today. Given the fighting in the streets, did you want to reschedule?" the operator asked.

"It is fine. I arrive soon. Need report encounter with Empire thugs and capes. Not want PRT discover event from news or social media." Kotoro answered.

"Are you safe? I'll see if I can arrange a debriefing with the Director or a protectorate cape. Can you tell me what happened so I can give them a brief rundown?" asked the operator.

With Epistēmē's help, Kotoro related the highlights of what occurred.

"I'm glad you called this in. I think I know the location you're describing. I'm going to place a high priority alert for a PRT squad and any available Protectorate capes to check the area to see if they're still around. Its almost sure to end up on PHO within hours if not minutes. Certainly by the end of the day."

"Thank. Please tell staff I arrive." Kotoro said, and terminated the connection as he landed in front of a guarded staff entrance he had been informed of at the rear of the building. The guard used some kind of tinkertech device to do a biometric scan, identifying Kotoro, and allowed him through. Epistēmē used a map of the office building to guide Kotoro to the Conference room assigned to his meeting with Image staff.

PRT ENE HQ 8th floor; High Security Conference Room; March 17 2008 5:45 PM

Kotoro entered the conference room to find a somewhat obese man wearing clothing that appeared deliberately slovenly. He had an odd hair style. The sides were bald or short, and most of the rest was being held up in the center. It was like an odd fusion of a regent pompadour and mohawk. He wore eyeglasses that were fully rectangular and had brightly colored frames and tinted lenses, also brightly colored. Despite the look appearing to be uncontrolled, it appeared that he was doing it on purpose, though to what end Kotoro could not fathom. After allowing his sight to rest on the man for a while, Kotoro noticed there was also another person in the room that he had not yet met. This woman was extremely well dressed, and appeared to both care about their image AND want to project a very professional appearance.

The obese man took his feet off the table and stood to greet Kotoro. "Given that tail, you must be Kotoro. I'm Glenn Chambers, head of the PRT Image division. Nice to meet you young man. I expect great things from you." he reached out to shake Kotoro's hand.

The woman also stood now and introduced herself. "I'm Diana Gallo, the PRT East Northeast Image consultant. Ordinarily I'd be your primary contact, but since Glenn is here I'll mostly be observing, although I will participate in any designs or discussions where my input is wanted.".

"Mr. Chambers, Isn't your office in New York City?" asked Epistēmē.

"Call me Glenn if you would. Indeed it is! When I read the boy's file, I took a personal interest in his case. I can tell he's going to command the attention and scrutiny of the public once he really starts applying himself. We need to make sure to craft an image that supports his career and doesn't predispose the people to mistrust him. As such I felt a personal touch was in order, and its never quite the same to hold these meetings through a teleconference. Its not that bad of a drive really. I am somewhat glad that I arrived yesterday though. The city's turned into a madhouse." Glenn said.

"We know. Kotoro ran into some Empire thugs and several capes in a situation that required intervention on the way here. A group of civilians were caught between them and some ABB thugs outside of a medical facility. We reported the situation while we were on the way here. Its possible that Piggot or a protectorate cape may come to collect us for a more formal debriefing or report later."

"Lets get started then. Do you have any themes in mind for your brand, perhaps any names? Your current outfit is ... exotic? I don't think I've seen anything quite like it before."

Epistēmē pulled a copy of Glenn's personnel file. Glenn had high clearance since he was privy to the cape IDs of every ward and protectorate cape. While he was cleared to know if a cape was FROM an alternate world, he did NOT have the clearance required to view detailed information about alternate earths or universes. This meant that he would be aware of some of Kotoro's data, but not everything. He would know that Kotoro was from an alternate universe, but the information regarding him being an alien was classified beyond his reach.

"The outfit Kotoro is wearing uses modern armor technology applied with a more traditional look derived from older style armors from his father's culture. I suppose from this Earth's point of view that does make it exotic. The cultural divergence between our worlds is much larger than what you're accustomed to with Earths aleph and bet. It would be analogous to building a set of tinker-tech armor that resembled the armor of a Samurai, Hoplite, or Legionnaire, except in our case the tech isn't power derived. It is reproducible, albeit a bit beyond your world's current level of engineering and scientific discovery." Epistēmē supplied, answering as accurately as he could without revealing too much.

"Well, as far as the aesthetic goes, I like it, even though its a bit intimidating. I suppose that is the point though. We might be able to use it as a base for other designs. We don't really want you to look like you're going to war. The youth guard would shit bricks. We can revisit a return to a look similar to this one when you age out of the wards. If you can share methods for producing your armor technology I'm sure we can have our tinkers and thinkers apply themselves and work something out. It would probably be of great benefit to the rank and file PRT squads as well as the heroes. We'll see if we can use it in whatever costume we come up with for you." Glenn said.

"The power testers noted that you were deliberately holding back so as not to thoroughly destroy the power testing equipment due to the more advanced brute testing facilities not being immediately available. Despite that, damage still occurred in some cases, and several test dummies were lost or totaled. Just how much WERE you holding back if I may ask?"

"Enough. Full power would be dangerous to the facility and surrounding structures." Kotoro admitted, without specifying quite how dangerous it would actually be.

Epistēmē called up a set of files and transmitted them to Glenn's tablet. "I'm sharing some notes I pieced together using data I acquired during my initial tours of the internet in my efforts to learn your world's cultures and languages. We could go with a non-english name derived from things related to apes and monkeys, either the direct translation of those terms in the other language, or some cultural or mythological entity that is somehow related to the concept. Alternately, we could base it around an armor concept styled after something from this world. There is a curious phonetic similarity with a Roman solider category called a "Centurion" with the name of the culture Kotoro's mother is from, but Legionaire and Hoplite as names or influences to the armor designs might work, or perhaps even a gladiator.

* * *

**Cultural Armor themes:**

Roman: Centurion, Legionaire, Gladiator

Sparta: Hoplite

Japanese: Samurai, Ninja

European: Either historical, with accurate depiction, or a folklore style "knight in shining armor" look.

**"Ape" or "Monkey" in other languages:**

Malpa (Polish)

Bandara (Punjabi)

Pithicos or Maimo (Greek)

Menschenaffe (German)

**Deities or Bestiary of folklore/magical creatures:**

Satyrus, Callitrix, Cericopithicus (different names for same mythological ape creature)

Hanuman (Hindu deity)

Sarugami (Youkai monkey)

Vanara (Hindu character)

* * *

Glenn printed out a copy and began making notes on it. "Given you're not a tinker, I think we should steer away from heavy armor themes. You mentioned martial artistry and melee combat as your preference, so something easier to move around in would be a better idea. The gladiator style would do that, but I think we'd greatly upset the youth guard with that, and it doesn't quite speak to the martial artistry. They were more about weapons and wrestling. The helmet would probably get in the way too what with the ornamental crests."

Glenn continued to comment as he looked through the list and did quick searches into each thing and associated ideas. " With the local Nazi contingent, the German name should be avoided. I don't care if it upsets them, but its just bad optics. Maybe we could do something with Pithicos or Bandara. Vanara doesn't sound all that interesting or striking as a name, even though the creatures are interesting. I like the look of the mythological creature, but those names don't work very well. Satyrus sounds like a satyr, people will be mentally associating it with the goat legged things. Cericopithicus is too hard for most people to read. I do personally like Callitrix, but it sounds a bit villainous to English accustomed ears. People might find naming yourself after a literal god offensive or at least arrogant, so we'll avoid that one."

Glenn and Diana then went to work, churning out quick sketches of possible themes and designs to go with the names that hadn't been rejected outright. Everything they came up with for Pithicos ended up being inspired by clothing styles from ancient-Greece, although decidedly non-warrior derived. After several iterations they decided that one just didn't work well. People would end up thinking of Heracles as the primary association. While not a bad association, it wasn't really what they were going for. Everything inspired by Bandara seemed like it could be interpreted as racist, given Kotoro wasn't from the region and didn't share any physical traits with the native population, and they couldn't really come up with anything for Malpa beyond generic ape masks and costumes that looked like they'd fit in at a furry convention.

Going back to Sarugami, Glenn did some further searches. "This one. This has all sorts of earth Aleph animated shows and video game characters associated with it and a large number of their depictions in fiction are associated with martial arts in some way. With the local ABB gang there is a slight risk of image contamination, but they're not quite as toxic by association as the Empire. There have been plenty of virtuous capes with Asian themes and names. Not quite so many in the US with heavy Germanic names. It looks like they've morphed over the years. They started out as over-sized baboons who behaved like dangerous monsters, but some of these modern depictions look like they could be your cousin. Most are still a bit more primal looking than you are, but I think it fits well. Hey, maybe if we gave your armor a layer that looked like fur. It might look too weird that way, but its worth trying. We can always discard it later. We'll do some work-ups."

It took another hour of designing and negotiating, but eventually they whittled the choices down to a tight-fit body armor under an Asian style martial arts outfit with arm and leg wrappings similar to what Muay-Thai fighters might wear, and another look that more resembled what the traditional youkai-baboon Sarugami were depicted wearing.

"I can't decide which I like more. The one based on the old youkai legends has potential, but the martial artist one with a furry look is very appealing too" Glenn said.

Kotoro couldn't decide either. He liked the fact that the youkai theme would be built into something resembling standard battle armor, but he also liked the streamlined look of the martial arts outfit. He wasn't really thrilled with the heavier animal theme of that costume, but both costumes had strong animal themes regardless. Boy wouldn't they be surprised when they finally discovered what would happen with the full moon! It seemed fitting at any rate, even if a bit on the nose. He had nothing to add so he nodded.

"I'll run these by Piggot and some higher level PRT staff and protectorate capes to get some other impressions. The more heavily armored design would probably be better for any end-bringer battles or encounters with capes with high threat ratings. Given your power testing results, those seem likely to be in your future, but you're also a high level brute, and the armor would probably be superfluous after a point. Just to be clear, I don't actually need their approval to make a decision about branding, and ordinarily I wouldn't even ask their opinion, but I really can't decide which I like more." Glenn said.

[author's note for clarity: Choice #1 resembles something I saw on Newgrounds. A character in an image titled "Yokai Fighter- Yu Yu the Sarugami" by Cee-Haz. Similar to that, with cosplay-quality fur and animal mask additions to the costume to accentuate the look. Choice #2 would resemble Sinister Simian from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 3, but with a more serious and less campy implementation. It would be a bit less bulky and would not have the "furry" aspects such as the hairy neck, hands, and feet and the weird white dreadlock hair things. The mask **would** be styled after a baboon's face though. It would be built into a Dragon Ball Universe battle armor but with a distinctly Japanese theme based directly on how the original youkai were drawn.]

PRT ENE HQ Director's Office; March 17 2008 7:15 PM

Director Piggot was having a very bad day. This godforsaken powder keg of a city had once again started exploding, and this time without warning or any obvious incipient cause. There had been no obvious recent power imbalances or altercations. There had been a slow build up in tensions between the Empire and ABB for a number of years now, and a group of Drug dealers run by capes had moved in and taken over the more run down areas around the docks. She'd also heard whispers and rumors of a villain by the name of Coil, but nobody seemed to know where he was or what he was up to. Thinkers and precogs acknowledged his existence, but couldn't supply much more than that. His powers seemed to interfere with theirs somehow.

Circumstances had thrown her bit of a bone, though it came with steep downsides. Instead of rescheduling his appointment with Image, like a sensible person would have done, the new ward had forged directly through the conflict ridden streets to attend his meeting and had saved some people from the gangs, scoring a decisive win against some Empire capes, allowing the civilians to escape, and then leaving the scene without getting hurt or killing anybody.

On the other hand he hadn't been introduced yet, but they could still use this for PR points when he eventually was introduced. In the meantime, the PRT could foster public anticipation of the new cape on social media and PHO and participating in the 24 hour news cycle with commentators directed to discuss the situation without releasing the whole truth. It made the Empire look like chumps though. Hookwolf was literally taken apart. She sincerely hoped someone got that part on video. Kaiser would hate that, and the networks would quite likely run it on the news for the next several days. Come to think of it, if Kotoro was there, at least one or two of his AI's remote piloted drones would likely have seen the whole thing. Excellent. They would be requesting that footage as part of official documentation of the incident, but they could certainly put it to other uses as well.

It was almost certain that people from the crowd had also either captured photo or video of the event, or at the very least would share their account of it within the next several hours. On the other hand, the youth guard was going to be furious, despite Kotoro's high brute rating meaning he wasn't really in danger here. They didn't like it when the wards fought the gangs, and since Kotoro technically wasn't cleared for duties, having not completed his on-boarding and training, not been introduced to the public, etc. he was technically violating several rules, even though he made the right call from a tactics point of view. If things had gone differently, they might be cleaning bits of those Empire capes off of the street right now.

The office intercom beeped and security staff informed Emily that Kotoro had just completed his meeting and had been summoned to her office. Apparently Glenn Chambers had decided to accompany him as he wanted to ask Emily something. Ugh, she didn't really have time for Image's concerns right now, but she supposed she could put up with him for the ward's sake.

Glenn and Kotoro arrived shortly thereafter. "Hello Emily, always a pleasure. I have something I'd like to run past you before you get into the meat of your debriefing. We've selected a name for Kotoro's cape persona and came up with two possible themes and costumes for the branding. I'm in the unusual circumstance of being indecisive. I figure it wouldn't hurt to get another opinion. I'll be running this by some of the local protectorate capes as well when the situation outside is resolved. Until then I may see if I can ask some of the other capes or Image departments in cities that aren't dealing with a crisis."

Emily groaned internally, but didn't let it show on her face. She couldn't deny Image did a very good job managing PR and branding, but the costumes and behavioral directives so often went directly against the wishes and personalities of the wards, sometimes to the point of absurdity or even diminishing their usefulness. She looked through the materials, wincing a bit at the costumes. "I don't have much of an opinion as to my own taste, but that armored one is so distinctly Japanese that it might end up upsetting Lung and Oni-Lee. They may take it as some form of insult or challenge. Otherwise I have no strong preference. Please let me know when this is finalized, but until then I've got this basket case of a city to deal with."

Glenn nodded and quickly left the room. Turning her attentions to Kotoro, Emily asked "Did you really think we expected you to show up with whats going on outside right now?" Immediately thinking better of her comment, she put her face in her hands. "Don't answer that, obviously it didn't occur to you, you've lived among high level brutes your entire life." She switched topics for a moment, addressing the costume designs without Glenn in the room. "Does it bother you that Image is trying to get you to dress up like a monkey? If it offends you in any way, we can probably appeal on those grounds for a modification to the design." Piggot said.

"I would like to try it first. See how it look. I have tail after all. Most cape costume look ridiculous anyway. Shameless. silly. Might as well do same." and he thought to himself, I actually DO look something like that as an oozaru, albeit much bigger and brawnier.

[Author's note, Reminder: Kotoro left shortly after the arrival of King Cold, and doesn't even know Freeza exists. As such "monkey" had not yet come to be seen as an insult or a slur in quite the same way it became later on.]

She continued on her original topic, "Kaiser isn't going to like what you did to Hookwolf. I don't know how he'll respond. He doesn't know of your PRT association yet, so he may try to find you and go after you. They're usually hands off with the wards, but they play fast and loose with the unwritten rules when it suits them, especially for capes that aren't well known yet. If they can get away with murder, they'll do it. In your case however, I don't think they have anybody on the roster that can actually hurt you. Maybe Purity?"

"_Victor concerns me. He may be able to learn KI control and steal my skills with it. I should not like to see what happens if I forget how to perform what little control over it I have right now. He wouldn't be a threat to ME, but that empowerment would be a serious problem for the city and your other wards and heroes would be at risk." _said Kotoro said with Epistēmē's help translating.

Emily's brain halted for a second. "wait... learn KI? I'd almost forgotten you're not actually a parahuman. Are you telling me you can teach people how to do what you do?"

"Yes. maybe not as strong. Is impact by biology, fitness, experience, and training, but I not encounter any organic species not able use KI. Also, Humans so similar to Saiyajin and Centurion, should be possible." Kotoro said.

"Why didn't you tell us this before?" Emily said, silently adding Trump to Kotoro's power classification in her mind.

"Nobody ask. To me it obvious." Kotoro said with a shrug.

Emily was going to have **WORDS** with the staff in power testing about this. She sighed. "Fair enough. We'll be integrating that into your duties here at some point, but you'll have to clear the conditions for your introduction first. Can't have you training my men if they can't spar with you and survive the experience.

We'll come back to this topic later. Tell me what happened on your way in, don't leave out any details. In fact, let me bring the team scouting the site in on a teleconference for this. Do you have a recording of the altercation Epistēmē? If you do i'd like you to forward a copy to us for documentation purposes."

"Yes. I'm uploading it now." said Epistēmē.

While the file transfer processed, Emily called up the team at the site, which included two squads of PRT officers, Velocity, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia.

"We're securing the location right now. The ABB had vacated the area by the time we arrived. The Empire capes had just finished extracting HookWolf from the street. They managed to escape. We can see some damage to the parking lot. What can you tell us about what happened here?" said Armsmaster.

"I'm about to view footage of the entire thing. I'll be streaming it to your helmet visor as well through the teleconferencing system. " Direct Piggot explained.

They watched the footage in silence over the next several minutes. The director frowned when she saw that Kotoro was not immune to Cricket's abilities, but her eyes glinted and she smirked a bit when Kotoro ripped the smug Nazi's changer form apart. This particular cape had put a number of PRT officers and civilians in body bags. This footage was absolutely delicious. She would make sure the news networks got access.

"It was good for you to put on a mask and a costume for that." Armsmaster said. "There is a good chance this event will make headlines and be plastered all over the internet by tomorrow morning."

"That will be all Armsmaster, I just wanted to make sure you got to see that while you were still on site, so you and the PRT agents knew where to look to document the event and collect evidence." Emily said.

"Armsmaster out" he replied, hanging up the call.

"This brings me to why I called you in today, other than the debriefing itself. This might surprise you, but I don't LIKE paperwork. The more often you do this the more grief we'll be getting and the more paperwork I have to fill out. If you make my life harder I'm going to end up having to make yours harder too. We're probably going to receive pressure from the Youth Guard over this. I can push back a bit given the circumstances. There being an immediate threat to the lives of civilians and the fact that your decisions were tactically valid is in your favor. The problem is that you did technically break some procedural rules and expectations given your position in the on-boarding process. If it were up to me you'd hear nothing more of this, as I consider it to have been well handled, but it is possible that I may need to allow an imposition of consequences for political reasons. I'll try to make sure its something that will either be to your benefit, such as additional instructional sessions on PRT policy, or at least a slap on the wrist, such as another week or two of console duty in addition to what you'd be doing anyway. You'll likely hardly notice since your public introduction is going to be delayed. Please try to avoid doing this again if you don't have to, though. If it becomes a pattern we may have to be stricter than we would prefer."

"I'll notify you if anything further comes of this. I've already taken the liberty of informing your guardians that you will be staying in the wards barracks for the night. It would not do for me to send you back out there and compound the problem. I know it wouldn't be an issue for you, but I don't think the Youth Guard would accept that. You're dismissed for now. Get some rest." Piggot said.

Kotoro turned to leave and head to the wards common area. On the way out of the room, Epistēmē spoke up suddenly. "Director, one of my remote drones piloted by standard non-sentient adaptive AI has just pinged me to observe a scene. You'll want to see this and likely dispatch an ambulance or medical evac team."

He brought up a live feed on a holographic projection. There was a person wearing ABB colors pinned to a wall by bolts of some kind. He was bleeding quite a lot but the wounds didn't appear to be inherently incompatible with life. The blood loss was still concerning though.

"This is very close to where Armsmaster is deployed, so he might be able to search the site for evidence, and do some first aid." Epistēmē said, sending her the approximate street address. Emily immediately sent out an alert through her administrative systems to ensure the appropriate response teams would deal with it.

"Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Our people will take care of it from here. If you happen to see anything else of a similar nature, notify the operator on the comms channel I'm about to send you. I'll probably be too busy making and taking calls and coordinating the staff dealing with this mess to take direct action on every case, but I'll notify them to listen to treat you with priority should you contact them.." She replied to his email with the required access keys and IP address/protocol.


	11. Interlude 1 You can't hide from PHO

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**Topic: ABB Up to Something?**  
**In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Brockton Bay Discussion (Public Board)**  
**Bruce Lao **(Original Poster)  
Posted On Mar 17th 2008:  
There are a LOT of ABB out and about right now wearing gang colors and carrying weapons. I'm hiding out at home with the lights off. Does anybody know whats going on?

**(Showing page 10 of 10)**

►**White Fairy **(Veteran Member)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
The Empire is out in force right now in the Commercial district. They seem to be heading toward ABB territory.

►**Brocktonite03 **(Veteran Member)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
They've started to come to blows near the edge of the suburbs and docks. I'm hearing guns going off outside and people screaming.

►**XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
some kids wearing gang colors were staring each other down in front of school when classes ended. A few hours before Bruce noticed the older gang members hitting the streets. Maybe this all escalated from there?

►**HorribleHorse**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
What is it with this city? Can't we go a month without stupid shit happening?

►**stoogeslot**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Everybody off the streets! E88 has deployed their capes!

►**Bagrat **(Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
We do know that both Lung and Kaiser are very annoyed at each other right now due to the long standing stalemate between territories and some common criminal enterprises resulting in competition. Nobody in the know is truly surprised that the conflict is escalating now that it has started, but as to why it happened today? Not a clue.

Sources tell me that tension and trouble has been building for years between these groups. Nobody seems to know what set this off though. I've reached out to my network and everybody is at a loss. Neither of these groups has any obvious advantage over the other right now, nor any territorial conflicts (that we know of), or recent high profile slights or insults requiring payback. Tensions have been high and getting higher, so maybe it had gotten bad enough that almost anything would set it off like a brush fire in a drought.

►**MechaniSophy **(TechWizard)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Attention: Anybody who is out and about reading boards on their phones or laptops,

The eastern side of the commercial district has the highest thug density right now, but there are scattered squads of gang members all over the northern portions of the city and suburbs as well. There doesn't seem to be much going on in the Trainyard or Boat Graveyard, and the gangs are mostly steering clear of the eastern portions of the docks and the boardwalk, but I wouldn't recommend relying on that for safety.

If this keeps escalating Kaiser or Lung and Oni-Lee may end up getting involved. I don't think I need to explain why you don't want to be outside for that.

I highly recommend getting indoors and staying there until this conflict has ended or until a PRT squad secures your area and directs you to leave. Get home if you can and your home isn't in the center of the conflict, otherwise find a safe place and stay out of sight.

►**atypicalminus**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
There is a group of people pinched between ABB and Empire in front of the Caduceus Health facility, and 3 Empire capes just showed up. I'm holed up in one of the medical offices, I can see the conflict from here, but I don't think anybody on street-level is paying attention to the windows.

►**deadeye_maroon**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
^Im in the parking lot with said crowd. Everybody is scared. Even some of the men are crying. The empire offered to escort the white people in the crowd to safety, but apparently the folks here don't think they'll actually be able to stop the ABB from hurting them since guns are drawn, because nobody has accepted the offer yet. Nobody wants to be the first one to run.

►**atypicalminus**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
HOLY SHIT

I don't have the words, just look at this video: LINK

►**bigdetails**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
REKT

**End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 8, 9, 10**

**Topic: New Cape in the Bay?**  
**In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ►**  
**tabletjournalist **(Original Poster)  
Posted On Mar 17th 2008:  
PHOTOS: 1,2,3,4,5  
VIDEO: LINK  
Last seen tearing Hookwolf to pieces, and Knocked Stormtiger into a building so hard he broke or dislocated something, while shielding some civilians before he buggered off so fast that it looked like he teleported.

I don't recognize this guy. He's got a tail. Is he a case 53 or is that part of his costume?

Either way, that was impressive.

**(Showing page 14 of 14)**

►**bastard_who_is_fat **(Temp-Banned)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Jesus Chrissst hes TINY. I've had bigger chunks o' corn in mah crap.

(User received an infraction for this post)

►**Tin_mother **(Moderator)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
bastard_who_is_fat Please don't shame people for their size. (I'm infracting you for that and because this is so short and contributes nothing. Don't spam the boards!)

►**Brocktonite03 **(Veteran Member)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
I've never seen or heard of him before.

Go tail dude!

First time I've seen or heard of HookWolf getting his shit kicked in so thoroughly.

►**mellow_fellow**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
I've seen some kid with a tail before running through the train-yard area a few times at night.

►**richard_pancake**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
You're so whacked on the good shit you probably see heffalumps and woozles daily.

►**bastard_who_is_fat **(Temp-Banned)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Wait a minute, he kinda looks like a baybeh.

Come here! I'm bigger than you, I'm higher in the food chain! Get in my belly!

(User received an infraction for this post)

►**Tin_mother **(Moderator)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
bastard_who_is_fat Riiiiiight...

(please stop)

►**XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
None of the wards or protectorate capes look like that as far as I know.

Maybe hes a new cape or came here from somewhere else?

►**mellow_fellow**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
richard_pancake

and twice on thursdays!

But nah man, I swear I've seen him. At the time I DID think it was the shit making me see things. Little dude is fast! Wouldn't have been able to catch him on camera even if I wanted to.

►**factoidupstream**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Someone who can take apart a brute like Hookwolf that quickly is kinda scary. At least he doesn't seem inclined to villainy. Put himself in the way to protect those people. Props for that. I've been around when Cricket made her noises before, that shit is cancer.

►**Bagrat **(Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
I'll ask around, but he must be very new. He doesn't fit any of the cape profiles I've seen.

►**bastard_who_is_fat **(Temp-Banned)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back ribs... Chili-i-i-i-i's Baby back ribs.

(User received an infraction for this post)

►**Tin_mother **(Moderator)  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
bastard_who_is_fat How about no.

Have fun with your temp ban!

(take a vacation. Go outside...well maybe not tonight).

►**XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
-MODERATOR EDIT: Don't speculate on cape identities. You've been warned about this before.-

►**dank_one**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
hookwolf: did he died?

►**atypicalminus**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
dank_one no, the other empire capes helped dig him out of the street and managed to drag him off before the PRT and Protectorate showed up. He was still in his changer form and only partially recovered, but was moving under his own power.

►**caramell_dansen**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
hey theres more video of this new cape kicking ass here: LINK

(user received an infraction for this post)

►**only_the_realest**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
caramell_dansen (LOL) get out of here with that lame duckroll shit

►**Bruce Lao**  
Replied On Mar 17th 2008:  
Its only 7:47 and we're already at 350+ replies, lmao. Guess all of you are stuck inside with nothing else to do too?

****End of Page. ********1********, ********2********, ********3******** ... ********12********, ********13********, 14****


	12. Ch 10 Mealtime at the Docks

Gibbons Home; March 24 2008 3:15 PM

Nothing worthy of note had happened during school aside from what appeared to be the usual educational efforts. The gang members were relatively subdued after the antics the gangs had pulled. They were probably laying low and trying to stay out of trouble while tempers of the heroes and police were still flaring. There was still a bit of posturing and banter, but they avoided doing anything physical to each other.

Kotoro, on the other hand, was still being subjected to the attention of the students with ties to the Empire. He kept up his meek and timid act, but it put him in a sour mood to not be able to fight back without catastrophic results. He really needed to get a handle on suppressing his powers properly. He'd gladly show them to a proper beatdown provided they could walk away from it afterward. He didn't want to turn them into chunky salsa or cause severe internal damage, which was still a real risk at this point.

He wouldn't feel so bad if they were to die due to being total jerks to the wrong guy, or being responsible for such deaths himself. Not normally anyway. The antisocial psychopaths were practically begging for it. However, running afoul of the legal system and getting ejected from the wards would make his life significantly more annoying to manage, and they weren't really a threat. He could deal with these nuisances thinking he was a pushover until he developed enough control over his strength to fight back without exposing himself.

Perhaps something in the archives they had built from interviewing the citizens of Yardrat, and the databases they had generously offered for copying while they had been investigating spatial warp phenomena together would prove beneficial to his efforts. Despite naturally being quite physically weak on average, the inhabitants of Yardrat were extremely well adept at ki control. They used it to increase their strength and enable fantastical abilities of many varieties, but it could also be used in the opposite way, shrinking instead of growing, and using a softer touch instead of a destructive blow.

On another, related, topic, he'd overheard a conversation between Epistēmē and one of the senior Yardrat trainers about the underlying mechanics and theory behind their teleportation technique, which relied either on being intimately familiar with a particular location, or on being able to locate a target person's KI. He knew from the existence of the scout scope technology and associated scout visors being developed by the Cold Empire's R & D teams that it was possibly to build KI detectors, but it hadn't occurred to him before overhearing that conversation that people could learn to sense KI directly. That was worth learning even if it didn't assist with his other issue.

He would bring the ideas up with Epistēmē the next time they had a moment in private. He would need to make another trip to the Techne soon. He'd have to improve his stealth or move faster than others would easily detect. He'd apparently been spotted in the area by cape enthusiasts on prior visits, and he really didn't want to bring any attention to the vessel until it could be moved to a more suitable location. Epistēmē had plans to meet with the leaders of the local PRT and Protectorate later in the week to determine what his own plans would be as far as cape work and affiliation.

He heard Donald enter the house and call up to him. "Kotoro I'm going to take a trip out to the Dockworkers Union Offices in a bit. We are having an informal meeting today, and they'll be serving dinner. Several of the members will be taking their families and kids. Janet has a grant due soon so she'll be working late at the lab, but if you want to head over with me you might make some new friends".

"I will come. Have some time. Console duty at 6."

"That won't be a problem. They'll be wrapping things up officially at 5:30 and you're plenty fast enough to make it to the PRT from any location in the city in a pinch. Bring that outfit of yours in case you need to suit up, we can leave it in a bag in the car with other clothes piled in with it. We can stuff that bag in a trash bag or something to make it uninteresting to any thieves who might want to try a smash and grab on any cars. The area around the docks isn't always safe from that kind of thing."

Kotoro packed his things into a gym bag and got into Donald's car. The dockworkers offices were only a short drive away. A cloaked spy drone followed them, staying nearby and keeping overwatch.

DockWorkers Union Offices; March 24 2008 4:00 PM

Donald pulled into a parking lot next to a fairly small business office adjoining several industrial looking buildings and rows of warehouses. In the distance there was a crane that had once been used to load shipping crates onto barges and other similar vessels, which hadn't seen use in quite some time. There were a few signs placed indicating that the meeting and meal would be held in one of the warehouses.

The parking lot was still relatively empty, as they had arrived a bit on the early side. Donald had quite a few years of seniority and had participated in negotiations alongside the leadership and representatives of his union, and due to being seen as a leader among the contractors and construction workers had also taken a leadership role in the negotiations with the dockworkers in their efforts to merge.

"Hey Donny!" called a tall man from inside the warehouse. "We could use a hand. We still have several tables to set up before the catering arrives."

"Sure thing Danny!" Donald yelled back. He turned to his young charge. "Kotoro your help would be appreciated as well. Just don't show off too much."

Danny led the two of them to a second warehouse where they kept various party and office supplies. "Who's the kid?" Kotoro heard Danny ask as he and Donald carried a set of tables out toward the other warehouse. "I know you and Janet don't have kids and you'd mentioned you didn't have any nieces or nephews."

"We'd signed up for an emergency foster list for disaster relief, refugees of wars, endbringer victims, survivors of cape induced disasters and the like with a joint PRT, National Guard, and Armed Forces sponsored program several years ago. The young fellow found himself without guardians due to unfortunate circumstances and the program called us in. He's been picking up English fairly quickly, but he still has a bit of culture shock. It has only been a little while, so we haven't had a chance to get to know him very well yet, but he's been polite and very well behaved so far."

The voices of the two men faded as they got farther away, and Kotoro hefted two folded up tables, as he figured that wouldn't cause people to ask too many questions, and moved to catch up with them. The topic had changed by the time he got to the area where the tables were being set up.

"The city rejected my official request to do something about the abandoned ships in the bay. I'm beginning to lose hope that they'll ever do anything about it. I can't figure out why they're stonewalling though. It doesn't make any sense. They've cited environmental concerns, risk of drawing attention from endbringers, and a whole lot of other things, but none of the responses are reasonable in a risk vs reward analysis. Even before tinkers we had the technology to deal with sunken ships without causing environmental disasters, and WITH them it should be easy to do safely. Something else is behind this. Something they're not willing to discuss or admit, but I don't know what it is." Danny said.

"Considering how many jobs are on the line and the health of an entire industry that used to be the base of the economy in this city, I'm forced to agree. You'd think it would be a political windfall to fix the situation. Is there any competition that might be buying them off? Trucking or train shipping companies or something?" Donald asked.

"I don't think so, many of those companies used to bring freight to the docks for international shipping. We synergize and cooperate far more than we compete. The only real areas where we overlap are on short-distance deliveries, and for those their prices are so much better than ours that it wasn't really a competition in the first place. Only companies that were doing large volume or shipping things with us on the same vessels already for a stop further down the line had any reason to use the docks for short distance freight." Danny said. "The situation has forced us to become very creative with finding jobs for the guys. There are still areas where we can get shipping and loading done, but that's where the merger comes in, more efficiency for project contracts and finding workers of varying backgrounds and skills. It is better for everybody really. Even if the docks were to be cleared, it would still be worth it. We should have done this years ago."

The sounds of vehicles engines and car doors opening and closing could be heard. "That is probably Annette and Taylor with the catering." Danny said. "We should probably go help them. There will be a lot of hot food trays and several long party size sub sandwiches." Between the 5 of them the task was quickly completed. The long sandwiches were laid out next to each other on two of the tables and four tables had metal trays and blue flame burners keeping the many aluminum trays of food warm. They quickly retrieved and assembled the remaining tables and folding chairs with the assistance of several dockworkers and construction workers who had arrived early to prepare the seating arrangements.

Now that they could relax Annette took an interest in Kotoro reaching out to shake his hand. "We haven't met. I'm Annette Hebert. Danny there, is my husband, and this is our daughter Taylor". Taylor gave him a wide smile and a shy wave. She'd been talking to her father and mother at a fast pace while they were working, practically bouncing between them, but for now she remained quiet, allowing her mother to speak.

"I am Kotoro. I had no adult guardians due to an accident, so Donald and Janet were assigned to me." Kotoro said, matching up his story to Donald's version of events, which answered the question honestly while not providing many details.

He didn't have to fake sadness, even though he had resigned himself to being away from his parents for a time when he fled planet Vegeta. He was still feeling the sting of not being able to see his father. They hadn't been terribly close, due to Saiyajin social norms not including stable two parent households and a cushy family life, but his father had still kept in touch and tried to build a relationship of sorts, which had meant a lot to Kotoro, as it was far more effort than most non-royal fathers gave to show affection for their offspring. There were also currently no options for clandestine long distance communication, which would have been an option if he hadn't jumped into a different universe. He hadn't seen his mother in over a year by that point, since she had returned to her home planet to present her findings to the scientific council. He had grown accustomed to her long absence, but anticipation of prolonged lack of contact with no clear endpoint renewed the freshness of the separation.

He offered his hand for the shake she had extended, only to be surprised when she exclaimed "Oh you poor thing!" and pulled him into a hug. His eyes went wide and he blushed a bit. He could see Taylor smirking a little. Annette released Kotoro, turned to Taylor, and said. "Taylor why don't you show Kotoro around and see if you can cheer him up a bit while we wait for the rest of the guests to arrive?" He hadn't expected that. He DID feel a bit better after the hug, but it was extremely embarrassing. He felt a momentary impulse to explain that his parents weren't actually dead, at least as of the time he left, but immediately realized that he would have to tell them FAR too much classified information for that to be a good idea. If they kept pressing on the topic, he could admit some information, but he'd have to be careful what he revealed. He'd gone over some cover stories with the PRT that should work to provide seemingly meaningful answers while not divulging any secrets.

Kotoro and Taylor wandered around the warehouses while the adults prepared the tables and arranged the buffet area.

"What do you like to do for fun?" Taylor asked Kotoro.

"I enjoy exercise and train martial arts. Fight strong guys. I also like learn how machine work. Take apart thing. Build new thing." Kotoro answered.

"Oh cool what stuff have you built? Have you ever had a chance to look at tinker tech? What martial arts do you study? There are a lot of dojos and mixed martial arts places in the city, have you found one yet?" Taylor asked rapidly becoming bouncier and more excited by the minute.

"Simple shop materials and tools. No tinker tech yet, but I am interested to see if I get chance" Kotoro recited as his prepared non-answer. He couldn't exactly discuss his real projects without exposing himself. Speaking of which he should probably set up a wood and metalworking shop to use as a decoy if anybody asked questions. He'd learn something by doing such work anyway. "I do not think there is english word for style I use. Was traditional style of my people. What is dojo?"

"Dojos are like schools for martial arts. Your people? Where did you come from again?" Taylor asked?

"Father from small nomadic nation, very tribal. Warrior culture. Had mix modern technology and traditional culture. Mother from more advanced culture. She visit home for big science report 5 months before I separate from father by disaster. Was displaced to alternate earth. No way home." Kotoro replied. He had been told that admitting to being from an alternate universe was not interesting enough to make him a target, and that revealing it would be comparatively mundane and less problematic to admitting he was a powerful alien.

"Have you read or seen any information about the local capes?" Taylor asked Kotoro, looking eager to change the subject away from his past, realizing it was a painful subject.

"This idea of cape is new to me. I am adjusting. No Parahumans in my world. I find tinkers very interesting. Armsmaster is most known in city. Brutes and blasters seem cool too. Masters scary." Kotoro answered.

"Armsmaster is SO COOL" Taylor gushed. She began telling Kotoro of all sorts of escapades the tinker had gotten into in the past several months. They spent the rest of their time waiting for the meal to begin wandering around the storage warehouses while Taylor shared all of the cape lore she knew.

The meal eventually began. At this point Kotoro lost track of Taylor for a time and while he tried to hold back to not draw too much attention to himself, it was still apparent that he had a larger appetite than one would expect given his size and people did stare a bit after his 5th helping. He politely notified the hosts, and Taylor who was sitting with her parents, that he had a prior engagement that he would have to leave early to attend. He grabbed the bag from Donny's vehicle and made his way toward the downtown area.

Medhall Corporate Offices; March 24 2008 4:00 PM

Max Anders sat at his desk, placing his hands together and steepling his fingers while he read over Brad Meadow's chart. Brad's Parahuman abilities had allowed him to survive his encounter with a previously unknown Parahuman, and heal at an accelerated rate, but under Max's orders he had admitted himself for a thorough medical examination. Satisfied that everything appeared to check out medically, Max had summoned Brad to his office as he was being discharged.

Max closed the medical information system interface and switched to the series of videos and PHO comments documenting the incident, as well as notes he'd taken from the rather rushed debrief he'd taken from the rest of Brad's team when they had arrived at base, visibly shaken, dragging a barely held together pile of metal scrap with chunks of asphalt still stuck to it, explaining that Brad was still alive but in need of treatment. He needed to refresh the accounts of events he had available before talking to his right hand and getting his account of things.

This new cape was intriguing from an objective point of view. Apart from being an obvious brute, he could fly, was extremely agile, and apparently had accelerated speed and reaction time. He took quite a bit of abuse from the team while hindered by Cricket, but showed no signs of injury afterward.

An intercom started and Max's secretary spoke "Mr. Meadows has arrived". "Send him in" Max replied. A few moments later Brad opened the door and stepped through, and Max gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

"I've gone over all footage available on PHO and spoke with the others, so you don't need to go over every detail in a play by play. You can tell me anything you think the others may have missed. I'm interested in any impressions you had of the boy, and anything tactically useful".

Brad sighed "I don't like to admit it, but I gravely underestimated the little bastard. Usually don't get brutes of that caliber who don't show it in some way or gain some press coverage before we run into them."

Max rolled his eyes "yes, that much is obvious from what I saw, it isn't a good look, but if he proves to be as powerful as I think he is, I don't think it'll hurt your, or more importantly the Empire's, reputation in the long run. For now people will laugh of course, but it should pass once his abilities are understood by the public. More importantly, what do we do if we run into this kid again? We need to determine rules of engagement."

Brad sat back and folded his arms. "Well to be frank, he completely no-sold me, and I'm pretty sure that if he wanted us dead we'd never have gotten away. I've never had someone tear my changer form apart like that before. I've had chunks taken out of me here and there, but nothing like that.." Thinking through what he remembered of the interaction, he frowned.

"He looked normal at first, while we were bullshitting and posturing, but when I crashed into him and he realized he could get a bit more serious with me, it was like a mask came off. He didn't hesitate and took me apart immediately. He had confidence on a level you wouldn't expect from a new trigger. I don't think this is his first cape fight, but I've never heard of a brute quite like him. He had an accent, but I can't place it. He looked a bit asian, but it didn't sound like any accent i've heard before. I definitely don't think he's local though."

"Maybe he's from the CUI from some minority group that speaks a language we're not used to hearing in the West. They're suspected to recruit capes by force and train the ones with strong powers into special forces of a sort." Max said.

"Maybe, but they're also known for being brutal and murderous, so why am I still breathing?" said Brad. He continued "At any rate, getting into a scrap with him is a bad idea if you're working with powers that rely on cutting, pressure, or physical force unless you're top tier."

"Cricket seemed to affect him just fine, aside from it not actually damaging him. He was able to power through it eventually. Victor might be able to steal some of his training away, though he'd be at an extreme physical disadvantage regardless. I'm not sure any skills he could steal would let him avoid the beating he'd get after, and if you take too much, he might not remember how to control his strength, and all that you'd have left would be fleshy paste or a fine red mist." Brad added

"One of the powers Othala grants might work, but you're limited in how long it'd last and it might backfire. Hate to give him the idea that you're invincible only for it to run out right as he lands a blow." Max said.

"Night might be able to get him from behind, but the second he looks at her she's toast. Fog's ability might work though. Can't hit gas. Only question is whether it'd actually hurt him. Worth a shot if we end up cornered. What about Purity and her blasts?" Brad ventured.

"She is powerful enough to attempt it if we get into a fight with him again. If it turns out he's somehow resistant to her power, she might not be able to get away. From the rumors I've been hearing and reading of sightings of this new cape he's very fast, and if he flies as fast as he moves on the ground, well Kayden isn't a brute. It could go badly. Out of all of us, she probably has the best chance of doing damage to him given he took your changer form to the face and didn't flinch." Max said.

Making a gesture indicating he'd come to a decision, Max said, "We will go for a 'hands off and observe' approach for now until we can assess his abilities more accurately. If you can identify areas he frequents, try to avoid sending any Parahuman teams into those territories if you can help it. If he happens to come after you put on a show for PR's sake, posture, grandstand, and create distractions, and look for an escape route. Don't make us look weak, but I don't want you to be captured again. You've pissed off the PRT a bit too often to think they'll be lenient, and spending resources on a breakout would be dangerous and wasteful. I'll arrange for a more formal discussion of our strategy tomorrow regarding our short term operations expansion efforts, and this new cape, with the others soon, so be ready to attend. I'd like you to relay your observations to the rest of the Empire."


End file.
